Steve Swinburne

Bobcat, North America's Cat - for teachers

Illustrated by Robin Brickman.
Published by Millbrook Press, 1996.
Hardcover 1-56294-182-8.

Book Description

Bobcats truly are North America’s cats. From southern Canada to northern Mexico, bobcats inhabit forest, deserts and swamps. Although they have been hunted and trapped for more than two hundred years, there may be as many as 1.5 million bobcats in North America.

But these cats live in their own secret world. Elusive and mysterious, these beautiful animals are rarely seen in the wild.

In this fascinating book, chock full of bobcat facts and stunning full-color photographs, Steve Swinburne puts us on the trail of the bobcat, examining its behavior, hunting techniques, and habitat, as well as the cat’s special abilities to survive. Join Steve as he leads us into North American woods to stalk the mysterious bobcat.

How I was inspired

I’ve seen a bobcat in the wild only once. My only sighting was brief but memorable. I was driving through Vermont one evening when I passed a bobcat sitting beside the edge of the road. For a long moment, I watched this wild and beautiful creature in the glare of my lights. It looked as at home in the night woods as stars do in the sky. I braked and backed up slowly to get a better look, but the cat was gone. That fleeting look planted the seed of curiosity and since then I’ve wanted to learn more about the bobcat. It was this curiosity that triggered the idea for the book.

Book Features

• Beautiful photographs of wild bobcats by Susan Morse
• Bobcat facts
• Map of bobcat range
• Comparison of North American cats including house cat, bobcat, lynx and Mountain lion
• Nature dictionary
• Further reading
• First-person narrative

Classroom Connections

• Where do you find these animals?
• What do they have that enable them to survive? Draw these adaptations.
• Observe a cat. How are a cat and bobcat the same? Different?
• How are your dog and cat different? The same?
• Discover the nearest bobcat habitat to where you live. Describe it.
• Visit a bobcat at your local zoo. Make observations.
• Make bobcat puppets with a paper bag. Put on a play to tell why bobcats need friends.

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