Baby bobcat recovering well at Morgan Hill wildlife center

CALIFORNIA -- The Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center in Morgan Hill is celebrating 20 years of successfully raising and releasing orphaned or injured bobcats back into their native habitat.

Their most recently rescued bobcat is an orphan named Fairfield.
The kitten was found in Fairfield, Calif. alone after its mother was shot. WERC rescuers suspect the mother was killed because she had been eating a homeowner's chickens.

 

"Luckily someone found the kitten and heard that there was possibly a bobcat shot. So they put two and two together," said Anna Venneman an outreach coordinator for WERC.

Fairfield was only 10-weeks-old and weighed 2.5 pounds when he was brought to Morgan Hill.

WERC uses innovative anti-imprinting techniques so that the bobcats can one day return to the wild.

The kittens are raised, trained and cared for entirely by "foster mothers" who dressed in full-body fur costume scented with bobcat urine and native herbs and worked in complete silence to prevent any positive association with humans.

If all goes well, the cute but feisty Fairfield will be rehabilitated and released back into the wild in October.

(KSBW - July 30, 2014)