She thought she saved a kitten on a Tennessee road, but it was really a ‘wild cousin’
A woman was driving down a road in Tennessee when a small animal caught her eye.
“I thought it was a kitten and just wanted to keep it from getting hit by a car or eaten by coyotes,” Jill Hicks wrote in a Facebook post about last week’s encounter.
That’s when she decided to pull over and jump to the rescue, another Facebook post said.
But after a closer look, she figured out it wasn’t a domestic cat at all. It was actually a wild bobcat that was just a few weeks old, Hicks wrote.
The mix-up happened while Hicks was driving to dinner in Chattanooga, WATE and WDAF report.
“I put it in the car with me and it climbed all over me like a kitten would do, got in floorboard under my feet, and after stopping a couple of times to get it nestled into my lap, I finally got home with it,” she posted.
Hicks’ neighbor took photos of Arwen the cat, seen with brownish fur and pointed ears, according to pictures on her Facebook page.
Hicks, who “sure was about to put that baby in the sink and give it a bath and put it in bed with me,” is grateful her neighbor helped her to find out the truth, she said.
For Fox Sake Wildlife Rescue in Chattanooga took in the tiny bobcat and is helping her get ready for her release, according to the volunteer center’s Facebook page.
“Now that the initial shock and confusion have worn off, she’s acting a lot more like we’d expect of a bobcat, with lots of defensive behavior and a healthy mistrust of humans,” the rescue posted Wednesday.
So how can you avoid Hicks’ mistake?
Bobcats are usually larger than domestic cats, with“stubby” tails and black streaks in their coating, according to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
And the rescue tells pet owners that “vaccinating your own cats and keeping them indoors helps protect not only your cats and their possible prey, but also their wild cousins!”
This story was originally published September 26, 2019 at 9:17 AM with the headline "She thought she saved a kitten on a Tennessee road, but it was really a ‘wild cousin’."
