Canis lupus hominis

A Bengal cat was captured in a live trap in home county. The local officials didn't know what it was, so they turned it loose! If I had not lost yet another router to the power surges we sometimes have here, I would have identified it. And someone might have been reunited with her pet.

Last week, I had no internet access, and boy, was that a bad week  for my router to blow up! I think I could have saved the local conservation officer a headache and maybe we wouldn’t have an exotic cat running loose in the wilds of West Virginia.

On Monday, the local news website  had a story of unusual cat that was captured in cage trap on a high ridge not far from my home. The cat was described as having a long tail and spots and about the size of a domestic cat. No one knew what it was. I’m sure a few conjectured that it was a baby cougar, while a few more educated naturalists might have claimed that it was an ocelot. I knew nothing of this story. I was without internet access and was totally in the dark.

When I had full access to the web yesterday, I perused the stories I missed, as one usually does when one hasn’t been able to access the site for a number of days. When I came upon this story, I was taken aback. It was obviously a Bengal cat— a hybrid between an Asian leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) and a domestic cat. These animals are quite expensive pets, and I was rather shocked that one would wind up in a cage trap. However, when I read the follow-up stories, I knew that I had come across a real comedy of errors, which ended with an exotic cat released into the woods.

These cats can be rather difficult pets, especially F1’s. She may have been easy to keep as a kitten,  but when her leopard cat instincts got the better of her, she simply wandered off into the wild.

Now, local people do have problems with feral cats, raccoons, and opossums this time of year, and they are setting cage traps for them. I don’t think the people who set this trap were prepared to find such an unusual specimen. 

When this cat wound up in a cage trap, the local conservation officer was called in to identify the species. Apparently, he didn’t know about this hybrid.

If I had seen the photo, I would have instantly sent a response, and we wouldn’t have had this problem. The fellow who runs the website is someone I know, and I’m sure he would have passed that word along. Someone would have done a google search, and the cat would have been identified. if they had only held onto the cat for a day or two longer, it could have been sorted out.

Unfortunately, the cat was released into an even more remote part of the county, and now her owners are looking for her. 

But Asian leopard cats aren’t a native species, either in their pure form or their hybrid form. I worry that such an animal could be a bit of a hazard to the ecosystem. This animal is going to be better equipped to survive in the wild than typical tabby. My guess is this animal had been purchased as a brood queen. F1’s are typically closer in temperament to the leopard cat, and thus, must be crossed back to gentler breeds of domestic cat to create a safe domestic pet. Most people don’t buy F1 Bengals as pets. They are far more complicated than the typical domestic cat. And apparently, it doesn’t take much for them to go feral.

Now there is an introduced feline species running the ridges of remote Central West Virginia, and I’m blaming it all on the router.