WYMAN TOWNSHIP – Mildred Luce, age 91, grabbed a bobcat by the tail. Literally.
Several weeks ago, as she was starting a fire in her kitchen wood stove, Luce heard a commotion outdoors. “I opened the door and there was a bobcat and my female cat, Smudge, on the deck,” she said.
“The bobcat had Smudge’s head in his mouth and Smudge had one of the bobcat’s feet in her mouth.”
Luce, who lives alone, acted quickly to save her pet. She stepped outside, grabbed a shovel, and pressed the blade down on the bobcat’s neck until it was immobile, she explained.
Then, “I grabbed the big cat’s head in my right hand and its short tail in my left hand,” she said.
“The big cat loosened its grip on my kitty, who ran through the open door and disappeared.”
Luce let go of the bobcat and then, while she watched, the bobcat followed Smudge into the house.
Luce said she saw her pet scurry down the cellar steps and she hurried around the bobcat to close the cellar door to prevent the bobcat from following Smudge. Then, according to Luce, she watched the bobcat wander around the rooms of the house “as if it lived there.”
After a few minutes, Luce called her next-door neighbors, Mark and Cindy Rollins, for help. The couple called the Maine Warden Service, and Mark Rollins went to the house to help Luce contain the wild animal. Luce and Rollins, who were not hurt, managed to confine the bobcat to the bathroom, cornering it in the shower stall.
While waiting for a warden to arrive, Luce said she remembered seeing a little blood on a blanket where her other cat, Foxy, a 5-year-old orange tiger, usually slept. At the time, Luce said, she thought Foxy had simply cut himself on some glass from a window that had been broken a few days earlier when ice fell off the roof.
When Luce went down to the cellar to get firewood, she said she heard Foxy meowing. She saw blood, but couldn’t coax the cat out of the corner.
The Rollinses were able to capture Foxy, and Luce said it was clear that he had been attacked.
Injuries to his right leg and face were extensive, and Luce said she believes she simply didn’t hear the cats fight or notice her pet’s injuries when she let him in for the evening the day before.
While Luce called veterinarians to get help for Foxy, District Game Warden Reggie Hammond arrived and, along with Luce’s son-in-law, Tom Brackett, managed to cage the bobcat and loaded the animal into the back of Hammond’s truck.
According to Hammond, the 15- to 20-pound bobcat was probably less than a year old and appeared to be starving and looking for food.
He said the cat appeared to be healthy and may have wandered into the house out of confusion because events unfolded so quickly once Luce stepped on to her deck.
Once a wild animal has contact with a domestic animal or human, it is the policy of the Warden Service to test the wild animal for rabies. The bobcat, which had to be destroyed in order to conduct a rabies test, did not have rabies, Hammond said.
Hammond didn’t consider the altercation between domestic and wild cat to be all that unusual for this part of Maine.
“It’s pretty common in the spring up here. When the snow is deep, they have a hard time and are going to start getting what they can to eat. It’s not an uncommon thing for people to have their cats grabbed,” said Hammond.
“My cats have been such good companions to me,” Luce said. An avid gardener, she said Foxy would ride on her back while she was weeding.
Foxy was treated at the Animal Medical Clinic in Skowhegan, but later died from his injuries during surgery to amputate a leg.
Smudge was treated at the same clinic, and is recovering from her injuries.
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