A Cameo Highlands couple was asleep in their gated courtyard a few nights ago, enjoying the late summer weather and nighttime quiet. Suddenly, they heard the snarling sounds of a cat fight, and when they opened their eyes, there was a bobcat just ten feet from them.
“It was very startling,” said Nik Froehlich. “It didn’t seem too much in a hurry to scatter when I approached it. The bobcat jumped on our eight-foot wall, and kind of had a stare-down with me, reminded me of just any other cat — then took off. Our three cats were frozen stiff with shock.”
Dick Newell, who operates the volunteer group Orange County Trackers, said the family had just met a bobcat with two kittens who makes her home along Buck Gully. The good news was that the bobcat wasn’t going to eat the three Froehlich kittens. The bad news? The bobcat clearly thinks those kittens were in “her” territory.
Corona del Mar is home to several bobcats, who feed on rabbits and occasionally rodents and who do not consider pet dogs or cats to be a meal. When they scuffle with domestic animals, Newell said, it’s because those pets have been exploring the bobcat’s marked territories.
“Bobcats don’t understand when we put a fence down,” he said. If you haven’t used your yard much, the bobcat might consider it her own. The best bet, he said, is to use your yards frequently, and to keep pets inside your home if you live along a greenbelt or canyon.
Besides the mother and her kittens that visited the Froehlich family, there is a male bobcat, called Lance, that lives in the village wildlands. There are other bobcats throughout Newport Beach, including around golf courses, the Back Bay and Buck Gully, Newell said. He tracks them with cameras and tags, naming them (one female is called Babe) and monitoring their movements. He also has a reporting system set up on his website.
“They want to get away from coyotes,” he said. “The cat thinks, ‘Well, this is a great place.’ We’re taking away their homes” with the building of homes in the past 50 years, he said.
Newport Beach Police Animal Control Officer Valerie Schomburg said that some dog owners let their animals off leash and think it’s funny to see them interact with bobcats, sometimes letting the dogs harass the cats and even chase bobcat kittens into trees. “Dog owners should leash their animals,” she said. They also should not ignore rules banning dogs from some wildlife areas.
Corona del Mar bobcats breed year-round and grow to be 14 to 24 pounds, Newell said. Sometimes, a mother will move into an area below a porch to have her babies, but they don’t have longterm dens and prefer to roam. They aren’t usually aggressive unless they feel threatened — like if a dog chases a bobcat kitten up into a tree, or a house pet gets in their way.
He also said that bobcats benefit the area by keeping rodent and rabbit populations down, and limiting ground squirrels that tunnel into hillsides.
Photos courtesy of Carolyn, a Corona del Mar resident, and Orange County Trackers.
