Oatland vet tends wild bobcat

The first clue was the pile of five dead chickens.

Kenny Okorowski found them behind his Oatland Island house.

Looking further he discovered his sixth chicken buried nearby. His seventh backyard bird was just gone.

“I was walking my dog Saturday morning and when I came around to the backyard, the chicken coop was full of feathers but no chickens,” Okorowski said.

He dug up the buried bird and used it to bait a large animal trap he borrowed from nearby Oatland Island Wildlife Center. He knew the predator would be back for leftovers.

“I wasn’t sure whether it was a bobcat or a coon but I knew whatever it was needed to be caught,” he said.

The next morning the wire cage held a full-grown male bobcat.

“It wasn’t too angry,” said Okorowski, who’s lived on Oatland for more than two decades but who hadn’t seen a bobcat in years. “But if we went too close he’d stand up and look at us.”

Okorowski took the 20-pound cat to Oatland where veterinarian Lesley Mailler has since been doctoring what she believes is an approximately 10-year-old bobcat that probably tangled with a large dog about a month ago.

Its left shoulder blade was crunched apart and the floating pieces of bone had fostered a nasty infection that made it hard for it to hunt.

“I think the wound forced it to find easier prey,” Mailler said.

The bobcat might also be responsible for killing one of Oatland’s turkeys, Darryl, the week before. (Turkey lovers can take consolation in the fact that the other Darryl was unharmed.)

Mailler knocked the cat out and cleaned the wound, pulling chunks of loose bone out then closed it up again. Several days later she knocked him out again for phase two of the wound care. She didn’t have to remove the stitches; he’d already done that.

“Naughty boy,” she said to the drugged cat laying on his side, tongue out, anesthesia mask on.

Mailler removed two surgical drains, tubes of latex that channel pus and fluid out of the wound. Then she stitched him up again, finishing three layers of internal stitches with a surgical glue for good measure. The inch-long piece of bone she removed in the first surgery won’t affect the cat’s mobility, Mailler said.

Named for their short tails, bobcats are the most common wild feline in the U.S. with a total population estimated at more than a million. The males are solitary with overlapping territories estimated at about 10 square miles, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. They are not threatened or endangered.

Mailler has had recent practice on this species because the center last year acquired three adolescent bobcats that had been discovered as babies in South Carolina and nursed by a house cat. Mailler had to neuter them before they were put into their permanent display.

“We’ve had a bobcat bonanza going on,” Mailler said.

But the wild patient won’t be staying at Oatland permanently. Bobcats can live well into their teens, so at 10, this one is middle aged. He’s thin, but the Oatland staff is fattening him up with frozen rats and the same meatballs their captive cats regularly dine on. Just two days after the last surgery he was already feistier, growling at his captor and swatting when they came close to his cage.

“He’s discovered he’s a bobcat again,” Mailler said. “He must be feeling better.”

Mailler plans to get the cat healthy and then relocate it to an as yet undetermined location away from traffic and the temptation of backyard chickens. She’s hopeful for his future.

“He’s a tough old guy,” she said.