Tribute to Kennedy the Bobcat

Kennedy and Will were playing just days before Kennedy  died of a massive seizure from his previous brain trauma.  

 

DOB 9/15/07 (est.) - 1/24/08 Arrived at Big Cat Rescue 10/5/07

 

When Kennedy was a young kitten, about six to eight weeks old, he was hit by a car while trying to cross the road. A witness to the event took the injured kitten to a nearby animal clinic that in turn contacted Big Cat Rescue. In October of 2007 Rescuers drove across the state to Merritt Island, where the clinic was located. The young Bobcat was named Kennedy, due to the proximity to the Kennedy Space Center. Kennedy suffered severe brain damage that resulted in a month of intensive care.

 

He often had seizures and had to be force fed three times a day. After many weeks of recovery, Kennedy recovered almost completely. He still has limited vision with one of his eyes. Due to the daily hands on care that Kennedy required, he became too accustomed to humans and will not be a candidate for release back into the wild. Whenever BCR rescues a native Bobcat, every effort is made to come into contact with the cat as little as possible so that release will be an option. We are saddened that Kennedy is not a candidate for release, however he will be provided a permanent home at the sanctuary. Kennedy is being raised together with Will, another bobcat similar in age. Hopefully the two will bond with one another.

 

The following was his rescue story:  Within minutes of a call coming in from a veterinarian on the Spacecoast, Jamie and I were racing cross country to save a baby bobcat. The vet explained that a man had seen a car hit the baby bobcat and he scooped up the unconscious kit and pulled into the first clinic he could find. With legs splayed in every inconceivable direction and blood pouring from the kitten’s nose, no one expected him to survive the night…

 

But he did. Barely regaining consciousness the cub showed no sign of being able to see or hear but he struggled desperately to walk. He had to catch up to his mom. She couldn’t be far ahead.

 

When he was still alive the following evening and the blood loss had slowed to a trickle from his nose, the vet called Big Cat Rescue to see if we would come get him. It would be an eight hour round trip in the middle of the night and the vet’s description of his condition didn’t sound promising, but we had to try.

 

On the long trip to Merritt Island I thought about the vet’s description of the kitten’s determination to take off walking, even though he was walking into walls and getting stuck in corners of her office. What possessed him to overcome his body shattering impact with a car and try to keep on going? She had said he was a kitten, so I figured he must have been trailing his mom at the time of the impact. She said he was emaciated and he was struck on the main road, near the bridge that connects Merritt Island to the Florida mainland.

 

Knowing that extinction rates on islands far exceeds that on larger land masses it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that with rampant development in Merritt Island there was probably not a sufficient prey base left for a mother bobcat to feed herself and her young. She and her babies were starving and her only option would have been to pack up the kids and go…but they were too big to carry and too small for this kind of daring travel.

 

She would wait until dark and then bolt from brush along the road across the bridge to better hunting grounds. No doubt her heart was racing because she knew the dangers and I could imagine the tremble in her call as she urged her little ones to hurry across the road. I shuddered at what she must have witnessed when her smallest and weakest kitten disappeared under the wheels of a car. The sickening sound of the impact with his fragile little body. The horror of seeing him flattened and bleeding and even worse to see a dreaded human scoop him up and drive him away.

 

I thought abo