DANVILLE — A woman driving near Kickapoo State Park recently found what she initially thought was a house cat injured and brought it into a local shelter.
Emilee Gallas, Animal Control Dispatch for the Vermilion County Animal Regulations and Animal Shelter, said their department was originally told a cat was hit by a car.
“The call had come through to one of our other dispatchers, and it was called in as a cat that had been potentially hit by a car was in the road, injured,” Gallas said. “We were kind of expecting a pretty injured house cat to come in, and we had been planning that we were going to immediately transfer to a vet, if necessary.”
However, the cat was a wild bobcat.
“The woman arrived at our facility and was carrying in what was not a house cat and was actually the bobcat,” Gallas said. “So she didn’t have it in a carrier or anything. It was just in her arms.”
Gallas said the woman who brought in the injured bobcat was not sure if he was hit by a car or what happened to him.
“They just found it on the side of the road and picked it up,” Gallas said. “They were under the impression it was just a house cat, since he was a bit younger and he wasn’t full-grown yet.”
She added that the bobcat was quite “docile.”
“I mean, she was fully carrying him, no blanket or towel or anything,” Gallas recalled. “We got him transferred into a dog crate, and he was being pretty normal. And then got him moved into a transfer carrier to get him taken to U of I (University of Illinois), and during that time he was letting us handle him, and then he started to get a little agitated after.”
Stephany Lewis, a clinical assistant professor and Director of Wildlife Medicine at the University of Illinois, said the bobcat arrived at their facility on Dec. 3
“The bobcat was lethargic, was reluctant to walk, and had other mild neurologic signs,” Lewis wrote. “He had some evidence of bleeding around his nose. Based on these findings, we diagnosed him with presumptive head trauma and traumatic brain injury.”
Dr. Lewis said once they noted those injuries, they sedated him to do blood work, radiographs, and an ultrasound.
Which, surprisingly, Lewis noted were okay.
“All of those diagnostics were unremarkable (normal),” Lewis said. “He was in excellent body condition and had a very large recent meal in his stomach.”
During his sedation, the big cat received intravenous medication to treat any brain swelling, as well as pain medications. She said, “he was continued for another several days on these pain relievers and anti-inflammatories.”
And within a week, the bobcat was back to his normal self.
“His mentation, ambulation, appetite, and overall demeanor improved over the next week, and soon he was a completely normal bobcat and very feisty,” Lewis said. “We held him through the severe weather and released him very near the location he was found on December 16th.”
His care was a joint-effort, Lewis says, with Dr. Lauren Vincent, Wildlife Medical Clinic student managers: Riley Dunwoody and Alyssa Guest.
And as far as reports of bobcats in the area, Gallas said they are not frequent. She said occasionally someone will catch one on their trail cam in the rural areas, but it is not common.
While the woman was safe and unharmed by the bobcat, Gallas said to make sure you call the authorities when dealing with a wild animal. And while the shelter handled this situation well, normally, this is an IDNR situation.
“We don’t have the capacity to handle that type of wildlife on a normal instance,” Gallas said. “So we would have them contact us or contact IDNR directly, depending on the situation. But yeah, we definitely don’t advise just picking up wildlife like that.”
Luckily, the bobcat had zero broken bones, just head trauma.
Normally, even on a hike or a walk, you will probably not see a bobcat in this area of Illinois. However, this is proof they do exist, and Gallas reminds people that wildlife typically won’t even interact with you.
“Usually they aren’t going to approach people, they’re much more scared of us than we are of them,” Gallas noted. “I do know that a friend of mine said that they work with someone who actually hikes in Kickapoo quite often, and there is a bobcat over there that they see frequently on their walks. And they have not reported any issues with that.”
The bobcat was released back into the wild near Kickapoo State Park after 14 days in care of the Wildlife Medical Clinic at Illinois. You can see a video of his release on their Facebook page.