Elsa Bobcat
Elsa Bobcat
Female Bobcat
Born 4/88 - Died 10/19/04
Rescued in 1992
Elsa was purchased at an auction in 1992 and brought to Big Cat Rescue. She originally came from South Dakota, where she had been kept outside in a pen with no shelter from the freezing temperatures. Her ears were so badly frost bitten that they fell off. She appears older than what we were led to believe. She spends her days sleeping and eating in her large, 1200 square foot cat-a-tat with her neutered buddy, The Great Pretender. In 10/99 she had an abscessed tooth and under anesthesia it was discovered that she only has a couple of teeth left. She is fed a soft diet and is obviously not going hungry.
5/25/1997 I hadn’t told Don Lewis that I’d neutered Cerang, so Don was trying to breed him to Elsa Bobcat. I would neuter all of the males I could while Don was in Costa Rica to stop the breeding of wild cats in cages. Here is that diary entry:
I had caught up a Bobcat (Elsa) and put her in a cage attached to a 1200 sq. ft pen, where Cerang just moved, in the hopes of acquainting the two before putting her in his pen. I told Don I wanted to make sure they were going to get along before opening the door.
Behind my back he sneaked out there and let her out, but did not fasten the gate and she escaped. He did not tell me that she got away, so I don’t know if he saw it or if she got out after he walked away. The next day a tour group saw her out and told me. When I asked Don how her door could have been opened and left standing open he said that he had done it.
When we couldn’t find Elsa anywhere on property, we began expanding our search outside our gates. Jamie went down N. Meadowview Circle and a neighbor said they thought they had seen her, so Dad, Jon, Kenny and I took nets and a big carrier. We found her in the backyard of a house on N. Meadowview, so we set the carrier up in the narrowest spot where the shrubbery came around the side of the house to the front.
Some chased her from the back yard into the narrow space where she ran into the familiar carrier to escape them and Dad and I were able to slam the door shut behind her. - Carole Lewis at the time Carole Baskin as of this writing 1/24/2025.
TRIBUTES FOR ELSA
“Elsa always reminded me of Grizabella from the Broadway musical CATS. In the play, Grizabella was a very old cat, withered by her age to the point that she no longer resembled the proud, carefree, flamboyant cat of her youth. I always pictured Elsa that way, too.I met Elsa when she was already 16 years old. Whenever I came by, I would always see her resting in the underbrush of the cat-a-tat she shared with Great Pretender. For me, she, more than any other, was the cat that reinforced all the animal observation skills we had been taught as new volunteers. Since I knew she was very old, I was always careful to check her respiration and paid close attention to her eating habits. I was so surprised when, for a couple of days, I came upon her drinking from her water dish out in the open for the longest time. Little did I know that the end was near for her and those moments watching her would soon be gone. I was there the day she died and it was sad to see such a majestic creature pass through my life. As Grizabella’s song ‘Memory’ says, ‘Let the memory live again.’ Elsa's memory will always be in my heart…..Julie, Senior Volunteer Keeper
More Memorials at https://bigcatrescue.org/memorials
