It snowed a bit this evening. I had turned to dogs out to pee around 9 PM, and Josie ran out the door and as soon as she hit the yard she started barking as though she had seen something close. I got the spot light thinking that I would be seeing Deer, but there was nothing. I later found this cats tracks right outside the door. I think Josie almost ran right into him.
Karen and I settled down to watch the final day of the NFR. For some reason I decided to see if the Deer had come up to the stack. I went to the back bedroom and tried to shine the light on the hay. The reflection of the windows made it tough to see clearly, but I finally saw an animal on the top of the Alfalfa bale. It looked like a Cat, but I couldn't tell for sure. I got Karen and my rifle. We went outside and I had her shine the light on the hay stack. It didn't take long to decide that this was not one of our outside Kittys.
It appears to me that he caught another Rabbit as it went up to eat some of the Alfalfa. There was hair and a bit of blood under the hot wire, as well as "scuffle" marks.
However I couldn't see any indication that he was able to keep or eat the rabbit.
The picture above shows where the cat had lain long enough to melt the snow. I think he grabbed a Rabbit and got into the hot wire again, only this time he ended up inside the enclosure. I also think that every time he tried to get out, he got zapped. Either that or he decided to get comfortable while he was waiting for a Rabbit to come into range.
They are lovely creatures, but they don't belong in my yard. We have been pretty lucky in that we have only lost some Pigeons to them. It could have been a lot worse.
He is actually pretty heavy. Karen was trying to take a picture of him out by the hay stack. Of course she couldn't see through the view finder, and I am trying to hold him up long enough for the camera to focus, I am starting to grunt by the time the picture finally snapped.
Daylight has come, so I went out to work out the way that events unfolded prior to my interruption.
Here is where the Cat caught the Jack Rabbit.
He killed it, and then brought it under the wire, coming towards the bottom of the picture. You can see some blood spots just under the wire.
He brought it around the loading chute and ate it at the beginning of the chute.
After he finished, he buried the guts and a few other remains behind the wall.
The part that I find interesting is that after killing and eating one Jack, He walked back through the hot wire to take a nap on the hay stack, perhaps waiting for desert? Who knows? I am surprised at how brazen these cats are.
I did not blog about it, but this is the second encounter with Bob Cats this fall. I first noticed that we had a Cat working the house in June. I kept finding the tracks around the house, and other than some spots of Rabbit hair left from one of her kills. Some in the shadow of the house itself. Then we started finding some of our Pigeons in the kill spots. Then finally as we were sitting in the house, me reading, and Karen on the computer, one of the house cats sitting in the window. A loud thump against the glass brought me and a spot light outside to see what was going on. I found a large Bob Cat standing under the window, looking at me from about 8 feet away. I called Karen to come see, and the Cat moved back to about 12 feet and was standing there watching us. Of course by that time I could see that this wasn't going to turn out very well for us and our critters.
This one was a female. I had a hard time believing that she would try to kill our house Cat while we were right there. The TV was on, but she ignored all that and the Dogs on their trips outside. We will see if things will calm down a bit now, and since Jessie is fat, and the Harris Hawks will not hunt in the snow, I guess I will take a couple of sleeping pills ( Betsy and Frank ) and wait for better weather.
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