I saw my first Adirondack bobcat at Ted Cornell’s Art Farm on Sayre Road last evening.

At sunset last night, I pulled into Ted’s driveway. I saw a beautiful cat I’d never seen before. Ted has two cats, both large black polydactyls. But sitting nestled against a stone in the front yard near where Ted’s cats sometimes catch bunnies, there was what I first thought was a Maine Coon, a big one. It stood up as I pulled in, and then I saw the bobbed tail with a black tip. Bobcat!

I reached for my phone to try to take it’s picture, but my phone was in my back pocket. By the time I got it out, the bobcat had sauntered around the house toward the back yard. I went inside and told Ted he had a bobcat in his yard, and went into the back yard. The bobcat was standing next to the shed just down the hill. Woodchucks live under the shed. It didn’t run right away, but stood its ground for a few moments until I advanced towards it, trying to get a better photo. Then it loped away, not in a hurry, but as though it had other business to attend to.

This morning I measured the height of the siding on the shed to get an idea of the size of it: about 18 inches high at the hips.

After reading my Facebook post about it, a neighbor said she had seen it too and that there are several in the immediate area. Also, about two months ago, David Thomas Train and my son Peter were looking at tracks down by the water treatment plant in Westport and saw bobcat tracks in the snow.

(Click the photos of the bobcat below to enlarge them.)

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