Bobcat Kitten
Who’s Afraid of a Bobcat Kitten? The Arguments for Having an Exotic Cat as a Pet
Believe it, or not, the bobcat kitten is the new hot thing! Like ferrets in the late 80’s and early 90’s a market is starting to grow for bobcats and for bobcat hybrids. But is having a relatively dangerous wild animal as pet a good idea? Is this the equivalent of trying to raise a bear or a lion as a pet? Is it just a question of time before this practice starts to go wrong?
Let’s see if we can clarify the arguments for having such animals as pets:
Bobcats are beautiful creatures and will behave like any other cat when domesticated.
The bobcat is in the cat family and we have seen how well cats have adapted to domestication. The practice of keeping cats as pets doesn’t go back that far (only in the last few hundred years in Europe—you can’t really count ancient Egypt since it is not an uninterrupted line from then to now). But once people started keeping cats, they found them well suited for urban living.
As urban sprawl encroaches farther and farther into bobcat country, wild bobcats will become fewer and fewer, so why not save them by domesticating them.
Every year we hear new stories about humans encountering wild animals like bobcats as suburban sprawl moves farther and farther into previously undomesticated natural environments. The inevitable outcome is that bobcats will become scarcer and scarcer in the wild. This is why adopting bobcats and domesticating them will actually save their gene line for posterity.
Breeding and raising bobcat kittens provides a new revenue source for breeders.
The bobcat kitten and other exotic animals provide new revenue streams in these difficult times. With the current economic difficulties, we really can’t afford to be limiting the possibilities for economic growth. In addition, the increasing market for mixed strains of bobcat lines that have been crossbred with domestic lines provides new possibilities for developing new breeds of domesticated exotic cats for cat lovers everywhere.
If states outlaw the breeding and selling of bobcat kittens, the trade will just move underground as the ferret trade has in states like California where they are illegal.
The genie is already out of the bottle. Bobcat kitten lovers have already begun taking care of them and the word is already out. Even if individual states attempted to outlaw them at this point, individuals in those states will cross state lines, purchase their bobcat kittens and come back. Veterinarians will likely do what they do with ferrets now, some will refuse to treat them, but many will be thankful for the extra revenue stream and keep quiet about the current laws.
Bobcats are already becoming the next hot thing, so there’s no real point in resisting this new wave of the future.
Bobcats are safe.
The main argument against domesticated bobcats is that they are dangerous. But when humans raise it from the time that it is a bobcat kitten, then it is perfectly safe or at least as safe as other animals that we do not ban. A bobcat raised by humans becomes just as domesticated as any house cat raised by humans. Such an animal sees itself as part of its human family and will not become some sort of fierce predator killing the neighbors or eating his owner’s children.
Owners can also take precautions like de-clawing and having contained cages to keep the bobcat from escaping. Because bobcat owners know society will hold them responsible if any adverse incidents happen, they are more likely to be extra careful with their bobcats. In addition, since bobcats tend to attract more capable independent minded owners they are more likely to take proactive measures to insure public safety.
Furthermore, society will hold those irresponsible owners liable just as the owners of similarly dangerous animals like pit bulls and German shepherds and Dobermans are held responsible. After all, we do not ban dogs prone to aggression like pit bulls—we blame the owner for not properly raising them.
This is what we should do with bobcats. Society should not ban these great pets just because of people’s ignorance.