Keep Your Cats Inside: Bobcat Fever

      By far one of the more reclusive and mysterious of the North American predators is the bobcat. This is a very special animal that one should feel very lucky to see, should it ever happen. In this article for Adventure Publications, field guide author Stan Tekiela details his experiences searching California for the "elusive bobcat" He comments that "Spotting them isn't the hard part. Getting close enough to capture some images is. When approaching these wild cats you must take into consideration not only not being seen and heard but also not being smelled. If the wind is flowing in the wrong direction, the cat is gone in a split second."

     

     The bobcat (Lynx rufus) gets its name from the "bobbed" look of its short tail. They are about twice the size of the average house cat. They are generally brown or reddish-brown in color with a white underbelly and their tail being tipped in black like ink on a pen. Bobcats are carnivores and make a diet of primarily small mammals and birds if they can catch them. National Geographic describes the bobcats ability to leap over 10 feet in a single pounce to catch the prey they are hunting. If you are interested in seeing this amazing jump, follow this link to see a super awesome video from Planet Earth II. The IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) red list states that populations of bobcats are stable and of least concern but they have the potential to face a fair number of threats, most of them anthropogenic (human-made) in nature. 

     One of these threats is the tick-borne disease known as bobcat fever, which is caused by a parasite called Cytauxzoon felis. This is a blood parasite which is commonly found inside of bobcats as their natural host and is spread by ticks. 

Inside of these cells you can see a small circle, that is the parasite. 

     The common tick vectors include the lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) and the American dog tick (Dermacentor variabilis). However the lone star tick is believed to be the primary culprit throughout a good chunk of the United States including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Ohio and Texas along with others. 

          An interesting thing about the relationship between bobcats and the parasite is that when bobcats are infected, they are generally "asymptomatic". This means that infected bobcats don't display any symptoms and instead are reservoirs (or carriers) of the disease. The danger lies mostly for domestic cats, specifically outdoor cats. Common symptoms seen include depression, lethargy, anorexia, fever, and dehydration and without proper treatment infected cats usually die within 2-3 days. Common treatments for bobcat fever are typical anti-parasitic drugs however Dr. Leah Cohn has been working on a drug combination to treat the disease. 

     The new drug therapy, while a very costly treatment, usually reaching costs of up to $1000 for a liter is very effective and that liter bottle can be used to treat a large number of cats. Other treatments include IV fluids, pain-relievers, feeding tubes and blood transfusions however it was found in the study that only about 25% of cats survived these methods. Looking at these treatment methods, we can see that they are costly no matter what. These domestic cats are getting the parasite by being outside and being fed on by ticks which if you think about it, is a very avoidable condition in a number of ways the first and foremost being: keep your cats inside! 

     Before finishing my BS in wildlife ecology I was a wildlife rehabilitator and educator and one of the top killers of both birds and small mammals are feral or outdoor cats. In an article from 2013, author Rachel Nuwer makes a claim that feral cats kill billions of small animals each year. They are bad enough to where cats have been placed on the top 100 worst invasive species in the world list. This is a problem that doesn't just occur on mainland locations either, cats are responsible for 14% of modern bird, amphibian, and mammal extinctions on islands. So the big takeaway here is simple, please keep your cats inside not just to keep them from catching bobcat fever, but also to keep more extinctions from occurring across the world. 

Recommended Readings and Works Cited: 

1) Feral Cats Kill Billions of Small Critters Each Year can be found here

2) MU Veterinarian devises drug therapy for "bobcat fever" can be found here

3) Bobcat information from National Geographic can be found here

4) The Bobcat profile on the IUCN Red List can be found here

5) Searching for the Elusive Bobcat by Stan Tekiela can be found here

6) Tick-caused bobcat fever can be deadly to domestic cats can be found here

7) Cytauxzoon felis: What you should know about deadly bobcat fever can be found here

8) Investigating Bobcat Fever by Cornell University can be found here