“OK,” I said, nodding. “But by the way, do you have any idea as to how he escaped and ended up in a cactus patch?”
“Most likely a pack of coyotes attacked his family. A grown bobcat can whip a single coyote with ease. But those brutes usually attack in pairs or as a pack. Coyotes possess an excellent hunting system. One or two will distract the largest victim, then the others attack from the sides. It seems that our little cat was shaken by a single coyote, who was trying to kill him that way. But then the attacker lost his bite—his grip. So the cat went flying into the cholla. No doubt the coyote waited for his prey to emerge, then finally gave up. No way would a coyote willingly enter a cholla patch. You know how dangerous those needles can be and so do coyotes.”
“I sure do. You can pull the needles out, but the sheaves will remain and cause a great deal of pain.”
Then we set the next day for another visit and agreed that he should be neutered during the several days he remained in her care.
Leaving the vet, I knew that a great adventure awaited me. Raising a bobcat would be no normal feat. But driving home, I also realized something else; something much more pressing. How would I tell my wife that I had just adopted a baby bobcat?
CHAPTER 3
The Adventure Begins
“You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with a strange cat.”
Early American proverb
“HOW BIG WILL HE GET?” my wife, Chiaki, inquired with serious concern.
“A little larger than a house cat,” I replied.
“How much is a little?” she asked me knowingly.
“Maybe twice as much,” I confessed. “But,” I added, “I don’t think he’ll get that big.”
“Oh,” she said with no emotion.
My wife, who was born in Japan, was unfamiliar with bobcats. She thought it strange that a wild animal would be named “Bob.”
I had to explain that “bob” referred to the species’ normally truncated tail. Trooper’s tail, I noted, was longer than a typical bobcat’s, but not as long as one belonging to a house cat.
After a moment of silence she asked, “Suppose he bites someone?”
“Bobcats don’t attack people, not even in the wild. They are very shy. Like any cat, he may hunt rats, mice, birds, and rabbits. But if we feed him hearty cat food, maybe he won’t need to hunt.”
“I can fix him some chicken now and then,” she suggested with lukewarm enthusiasm, “and I’ll share the fish that I eat.”
“I’m sure he’ll like that,” I replied. “He’s really very cute. Big ears, big feet, and fuzzy face. The doctor had to clip his fur to treat the wounds, but it will get thick again just before winter. He purrs and is playful like any other kitten. Of course, he’s very curious.”
My wife and I had entirely different upbringings. I was born in Louisville to middle class parents. My mother was from Atlanta and was a university graduate. My father, a high school graduate, grew up in a small town in southern Kentucky.
My early memories center on my strong desire to explore the wooded wilderness of Kentucky, especially its mysterious limestone caves and the animals that inhabit its remote places. This drive to explore was, in part, the result of my parents introducing me to exciting adventure stories: The Last of the Mohicans, King Solomon’s Mines, and Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
It was my father who first led me into the dark wilderness. A fanatic on Kentucky history, he instructed me in the art of survival, techniques employed by early explores like Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark. My father once said, “When you are age twelve you must know how to shoot a rifle straight and throw a tomahawk.” He was serious. I qualified but fortunately never found it necessary to use the tomahawk for anything but chopping wood.
When I reached college age, I had to put aside exploring and concentrate on learning how to survive in a business world. I graduated from the University of Louisville, paying tuition by working at the YMCA in the evenings and lifeguarding at a local country club during the summers. I had dreamed of going on to medical school, but had neither the necessary funds nor grades required for admission. So after graduation I went to work in the laboratory of a local industrial coatings manufacturer. Both the company and I soon learned that I was a poor chemist; my career was going nowhere fast. Then the US Army stepped in and changed my life for the next few years. I began to experience a quantity of wilderness life. The army has always been able to uncover remote places to practice. I started with the rank of private, commissioned a lieutenant a year later, and finished with the rank of captain. I returned to my old industrial company, only this time in the field of sales, which was a much better fit for me.
I was assigned the Iowa sales territory, and later transferred to Chicago where I survived long, very cold winters. But my marriage did not do well as the executive life of travel and entertainment required me to spend much time away from my three children. The balance between family and job was one I did not maintain well at all. Divorce ultimately separated us. My ex-wife and children moved to Phoenix and I, too, longed to relocate to a desert, any desert, just so long as it was warmer than Chicago. But I had to remain in the north for a few more years as that executive income was required to support both myself and my separated family until the children became adults. The army had trained me in desert survival and I developed a love for such an environment. So, one day I decided to become an “executive drop out,” turned in the company car, and gave up a nice salary and expense account living and drove an old truck to Las Vegas. Las Vegas was then a small town of only 150,000 people at the time (now it is over 2.6 million) and sits in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Gambling, shows, night club life—nothing would distract me from my new goal, creating a desert scenic tour business. While discussing my ideas with members of an established tour company, I was introduced to a single (also divorced) lady my age. Thus, my relationship with Chiaki Keiko began.
Her given name was Chieko but I called her by her stage name, Chiaki, and often a nickname I gave her, “Chi.” She had, like the cat we would soon own, had earned the title “trooper.” She survived a number of changes in her life, each time emerging a little stronger for the experience.
Chiaki grew up in the city of Sapporo, Japan, during the last days of World War II, survived the Allied bombings, and later attended a Catholic high school run by German nuns who spoke English and Japanese, as well as German. In those days, Japanese civilians had very little to eat, as the Imperial army had taken most everything from the people, including food, for the war effort. At the end of the war, her first encounter with Americans occurred when several soldiers entered her family’s home, apparently searching for someone. She and her siblings were terrified. During the war, the Imperial army had announced by radio that American soldiers rape and murder all women and eat children. Yet, she discovered that the GIs were professional, friendly, and harmless. She remembered one odd thing: the barbarians, as the Americans were called, did not remove their shoes when they entered the home.
Perhaps Americans were barbarians but she soon learned that they had created beautiful music like swing, ballads, and jazz. Chiaki began to sing some of the American songs even though, at the time, she did not understand the meaning of each word. The nuns at her school discovered that Chiaki had a beautiful singing voice and encouraged her to enter a contest sponsored by a local radio station. She won handily, singing Nat King Cole’s classic ballad, “Too Young.” This earned her a trip to Tokyo, where she won more contests by singing American classics in the original English. This was an unusual accomplishment at the time. Very few Japanese singers could sing in English with any quality. Soon Chiaki became one of Japan’s top recording artists of the 1960s.
A few executives from Tokyo radio station JOQR had an idea for a new kind of late-night talk show. Those tuned in to JOQR one night were shocked to hear the mellow voice of a woman discussing her feelings about life, adventure, love, and men. For the first time in Ja
pan a woman was discussing those subjects over the radio as she played recorded songs. The show was an overnight success with the already popular Chiaki Keiko as DJ. This gig led to her discovery by American talent scouts who brought her to Las Vegas, where she was booked at several different casino-hotels. She married and Las Vegas became her home. Unfortunately, the marriage failed and Chiaki retired from performing professionally.
Back in the early ’80s, Japanese tourists were swarming into Las Vegas. Most were serviced by Japanese tour companies that had branch offices in Las Vegas. And that is where I found Chiaki, working as a tour guide and interpreter. As our relationship developed I suggested that we start a tour business, but she wisely believed that such a venture would not be successful unless we had a truly unique idea to attract business. As a guide she had accumulated a vast knowledge of what gifts the Japanese craved. These included designer items, leather belts, handbags, and wallets. But they were also buying unusual items to take back home to loved ones.
With limited funds, we started a small gift shop that sold beef jerky (customers usually bought a dozen bags each) and designer items we purchased at discount stores, marking the prices back to “retail.” Our volume of purchase was so great that representatives of the manufacturers of some of those items tracked us down, issued credit, and sold us new items at a wholesale price. Our profit soared and we were ready to move our shop into a major Strip hotel. The hours were long, but we were doing something we love to do—work with people. We often remained at the shop until it closed at 2 a.m.
From the moment we met, I had a plan to slowly introduce Chiaki to the strange but beautiful Mojave Desert. I fed her little spoonfuls of information on the plants and animals and led her into it so she could see, smell, and experience its rugged beauty. She eventually fell in love with it as I had.
At first I thought she might be acting the part of good Japanese wife by pacifying me with pseudo-enthusiasm. But I discovered she truly enjoyed the freedom, peace, and quiet—not to mention the fresh air—of our desert home.
Together, we read everything we could find about the Mojave Desert, which would eventually become a valuable asset for our business venture as tour guides. The Mojave, we learned, is one of the three Great Deserts, as they are called, in the United States, covering the entire southern part of Nevada and California, and extending into northern Mexico. Its birth began about 250 million years ago, when what is now southern Nevada emerged from a shallow sea. Sand dunes, the result of violent winds, formed 180 million years ago and were fossilized into sandstone. This sandstone often took shape as spectacular rock formations. Dynamic changes followed as the earth’s crust folded, faulted, and fell, often aided by volcanic activity. Finally, about 15,000 years ago, the earth settled down to become the desert landscape we see today. The Mojave is known as a “high desert” as most of it is 2,000 feet above sea level. The only exception is the Death Valley area, which is at and below sea level in some places.
The first Europeans to enter the Mojave Desert were the Spaniards. In 1604 Don Juan de Onate y Salazar led a gold prospecting expedition up the Colorado River and encountered a nation of tall, powerfully built Native Americans who called themselves the macave (“the people who live by the river”), from which the word “Mojave” is derived.
Some are surprised to learn that there are a variety of wildlife who call the Mojave Desert home. Surviving in this harsh environment requires a special strategy for finding water and avoiding the worst of the heat. Owls and bats are active only at night when temperatures are lower. Creatures such as lizards, snakes, rodents, and insects are active during the early morning hours and at dusk, seeking shelter in cool burrows during the heat of the day.
Some animals have evolved physiologically to enable them to regulate body heat. Jackrabbits, for example, have large ears lined with small blood vessels, allowing air to cool their blood as it circulates. At higher elevations, mule deer and bighorn sheep will drink enough water at limited resources to last them several days. Predators such as the coyote, little kit fox, gray fox, bobcat, mountain lion (aka cougar and puma), and desert badger drink water when available, but are not dependent on it as the moisture from the prey they eat, such as small rodents and birds, satisfies their needs. All of these animals rest most of the day, hunting at dusk and dawn.
Birds, which are known carnivores, such as the red-tailed hawk, golden eagle, and roadrunner, hunt during the day. The raven is believed to be the most successful omnivore in the desert sky.
The feral horses, commonly referred to as mustangs, and donkeys, called burros, originally introduced to the area by early Spanish conquistadores, have been relocated further north where there is more natural food and water. However, a few can still be seen roaming the Mojave.
The gentle reptile known as the desert tortoise spends most of his life in underground burrows to escape from the harsh summer and winter weather of the desert. This government-protected tortoise is the largest reptile in the Mojave Desert and is a vegetarian with a special taste for flowers.
Through our research, during that first year of our marriage Chi and I learned the names of most of the desert plants, identifying which were safe to eat and which ones weren’t. My small library of books on desert survival provided the basic knowledge we needed. I had no plans for us to actually put all that information to the test. It was simply good to know and gave us a greater connection to the desert. Now I would need her help in raising a kitten from the wild who had not yet learned how to hunt or find water.
“Well, we had better get him some toys,” my wife said, “and a cat tree to climb on.”
My sales pitch was working. Or perhaps it was simply that I had a very loving and understanding wife, who, like myself, possessed an element of curiosity about all natural things.
We had no pets and our children were now grown. It was only the two of us. So, deciding to raise Trooper as a kind of surrogate child, we embarked on a shopping spree for, among other things, a cat door (which I’d have to enlarge after two months); a six-foot cat tree; a litter box (which he never used, preferring the great outdoors); and a travel crate made of steel, guaranteed to hold a forty-pound animal.
I encouraged my wife to think of Trooper as an ordinary cat, and to tell anyone who inquired that he was a stray. A very large stray.
Fortunately, my work schedule permitted me to spend time with Trooper each day. He seemed to recognize me the moment I entered the room and purred when I scratched the top of his head through his cage.
Finally the day came for me to take him home. Of course, I was nervous. Despite all my research on bobcats, cats in general, and numerous conversations with the hospital staff regarding Trooper’s behavior, I remained uncertain as to what to expect once he arrived home.
Before the cat could be released, I had a consultation with Doctor Marg.
“I must tell you, Mr. Johnson, your Trooper is a real favorite with my staff,” Doctor Marg told me. “To our surprise, he is very affectionate and enjoys being stroked. We can pick him up to move him about, but he does not like being held for more than a few seconds. That is not unusual. Wild animals, when young, may like our attention, but our affection is strange for them, and being lifted off the ground makes them feel insecure.”
“Does he growl when you do that?” I asked.
“A little. But mostly he kicks his back legs. Keep that in mind. Those claws are dangerous.
“It may sound strange, but I am a bit envious,” she said with a grin. “You are in for an interesting education. I wish I could be the one to raise Trooper, but I have my work here. But I plan to follow your progress with Trooper.”
“Yes,” I replied. “My wife and I have discussed our . . . experiment. We’ve decided we’ll meet the cat halfway. We’ll try to domesticate him but with very few restrictions, meaning he’ll essentially have the run of the house.”
Doctor Marg chuckled. “That will be interesting. According to my nurse, Trooper knows whe
n you enter the door. He hears your voice before she does and presses his face against the cage with ears forward.”
“Maybe he knows who saved him,” I said.
“Oh, yes. You’ll learn that cats are superior observers. They will know the sound of your footsteps, the sound of your car engine, and learn your time clock—when you wake and when you sleep. Instinctively he would be a dawn and dusk hunter, but he’ll be pulled by curiosity to conform to your schedule.”
“I’m concerned about how high-strung he’ll be,” I confessed. “I’ve read that most wild animals exhibit nervous behavior.”
“It’s much too early to know. Like all kittens, he’ll be curious about everything. That is how they learn. Their little brain records it all. At a certain age, kittens learn faster than humans. We believe their early intelligence may equal to that of a three- or four-year-old human. They can’t ask questions, so they must learn by experiment. Like any child, he’ll need lots of sleep. He’ll even learn your moods. If you are sad, you won’t be able to hide it from your cat.”
“Really?” I blinked at her.
“Yes, and unlike we humans, cats don’t hold a grudge. They are the most forgiving creatures on earth.”
“Well, I hope I won’t have to ask for his forgiveness,” I said.
“While you are recording your observations, Mr. Johnson, we’ll want to know more about his vision. We don’t know if the medication has had any adverse effect on that. Most cats, so you know, have a 285-degree field of vision. Trooper may have even more. This could be difficult for you to judge.
“I’ll stay alert for anything unusual.”
Trooper Page 2