BIG-CAT WEEK
Rex Burress
After a skirmish with the bird-eating neighborhood housecat recently, I discovered that there is an official “Big-Cat Week” most years, sponsored by National Geographic, and a new series of cat programs are forth-coming, including Big Cat Initiatives that put emphasis on protection.
Of course, there are “Little Cat Weeks” when domestic cat enthusiasts show off their entries, as well as “Dog Weeks,” or shows, where those poor altered hybrids are paraded, whether they want to or not. Some shaggy breeds have trouble seeing through the hair, and would quickly loose out in the “fang and blood” wilderness.
Big Cats are defined as: “being the wild species, larger than the domesticated cat, and especially the Big Four of the Panthera genus: the Tiger, Lion, Jaguar, and Leopard. Not only are these the largest cats, they are the only ones able to roar,” so stated the dictionary. However, I can verify that California Mountain Lions can scream and perhaps should be on that list.
The Felidae family contains the remainder of 41 worldwide wild cat species, with the smallest being the Black-Footed Cat at 16 inches and the largest is the Tiger at 11 feet and 660 lbs. Who knows how many kinds of house-cat/Felis domesticus varieties have been bred since their domestication about 12,000 years ago, but about 40 domestic breeds exist today.
The strength and supreme predaceous ability of cats–even the house cat–make them admirable animals very able to survive, even though the downside is that house tabbies can be death on birds. The planet is running out of big animal habitat space, leaving even the mighty tiger imperiled with extinction. Nineteen states have banned big cats as pets, which affects the Ocelot Society, and international cat trade is also prohibited.
One of the most impressive ancestors of modern cats was Smilodon, the Saber-toothed Cat, that lived until relatively recent times up to 10,000 B.C. Some of the early mammal fossils that led to cats appeared in Asia as the Miacid form about 65-million-years-ago after the dinosaur's demise. They evolved into the Saber-toothed group of the America’s where they became extinct.
Saber-tooth's roamed in the western plains, thought to have crossed the land bridge from Asia, along with mastodons, giant ground sloths, rhinoceros, and camels up until about 12,000-years-ago. Mammal fossils are constantly being uncovered, especially in the coastal mountain quarries, and thousands of saber-tooth skeletons have been found in the La Brae Tar Pits in Southern CA. Mastodon fossils have been found near Table Mountain in the Campbell Hills at Oroville, and I have found a petrified camel tooth and agatized camel bones in the foothills and the desert.
My admiration for big cats led me to do some of my first art work by featuring bobcats and tigers. Tigers have wonderful stripe-patterns and rich orange-red coloration. Oroville High School has chosen the tiger for their emblem, and a mural of one snarling and charging is painted on the gymnasium, as if the coaches have unleashed it to chase rivals to competitive losses.
The cat’s silent sinister-ism and expertise in stealthily stalking prey, has also contributed to imaginative supernatural qualities connected to witchcraft, Halloween, and spirits.
The cat’s super senses and beautiful fluidity of motion make them difficult to see in the wild. I’ve seen a few bobcats, and one mountain lion, a handsome golden-tan individual that was hiding along the Diversion Pool Trail. I had reversed my course and scared it into running down by Glen Pond with me in hot pursuit trying to get a picture, but it simply melted into the thickets.
The Saber-toothed cat is the official state fossil of California.
“Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright/In the forests of the night,/
What immortal eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
–William Blake...mystic, poet, painter 1757-1827