Bobcats live from southern Canada through most of the United States to southern Mexico, and a bobcat is a wild cat that lives alone; it is named for its short tail, which is about 4 to 7 inches long, and its head and body are 65 to 105 centimeters long, not counting the tail; a bobcat weighs between 4 and 15 kilograms, which is 9 to 33 pounds, and male bobcats are 30 to 40 percent heavier than females. In Connecticut, adult male bobcats typically weigh 18 to 35 pounds and adult females 15 to 30 pounds. A bobcat is a carnivore, which means that it eats only meat; a bobcat has tufts of fur on its ears and ruffs of fur at the sides of its face. A tuft is a little bunch of fur; its fur is shades of buff and brown, with dark spots or stripes. The ear tufts are thought to improve its hearing.
Bobcats have strong senses of vision and hearing. In Minnesota, a bobcat relies on sharp eyesight and stealth to find its prey; bobcats are mostly active in the twilight hours around dusk and dawn. Dusk is the early evening, and dawn is the early morning; they stay active all year, because they do not hibernate. To hibernate is to sleep through the winter; bobcats rarely mew like pet cats, but they chortle and make birdlike chirps. Bobcats are patient hunters, and a bobcat hunts by stalking its prey and then pouncing; prey is an animal that another animal eats. Stalking means creeping up close, and pouncing means jumping; it puts its back feet in the same spots where its front feet stepped, which reduces noise when it hunts. It can leap as far as 12 feet; it can run up to 30 miles per hour (48 kilometers per hour).
Bobcats mostly eat rabbits and hares; cottontail rabbits appear to be the main prey across their range; besides rabbits, they eat squirrels, rats and mice; most prey a bobcat takes weighs between 1.5 and 12 pounds (700 grams to 5.5 kilograms). A bobcat takes whatever prey is most common where it lives; bobcats are important predators of many species of mammals and birds. A predator is an animal that hunts other animals for food; each bobcat marks its territory with scent. A territory is the area an animal uses as its own; bobcats scratch bare tree trunks, possibly to communicate with other bobcats. Home range estimates vary from 0.6 square kilometers in California to 201 square kilometers in Minnesota; male home ranges are generally two to three times larger than female ones. Females' ranges rarely overlap one another. In western Virginia, 20 collared bobcats had home ranges averaging 33.9 square kilometers for resident males and 12.1 square kilometers for resident females.
In Connecticut, daily movements of one to four miles are common. In Texas, bobcats may travel 3 to 8 kilometers (2 to 5 miles) each night while hunting; bobcats are habitat generalists, which means they can use farmland and towns as well as wild country; a habitat is the kind of place where an animal lives. Bobcats live in forests, mountains and brushland; brushland is land with lots of bushes. Rock piles and broken rocky ledges give bobcats important den sites and shelter, especially in the West; a bobcat sleeps in a hidden den, often in a hollow tree. A den is a hidden home where a bobcat sleeps. In Connecticut, a den may also be beneath windfall or in caves, rock crevices and ledges, or hollow logs.
In 2010, wildlife biologists estimated the U.S. bobcat population at 2.3 to 3.6 million animals. As of November 2026, bobcat populations in the U.S. are stable or increasing in at least 40 states, with declines in only one state, Florida, and the U.S. Forest Service says they are stable except in areas of intensive farming and dense human populations. Bobcats were almost gone from Illinois by the mid 1900s, but as of November 2026 they are found statewide. As of November 2026, the bobcat is listed in CITES Appendix II, and the Mexican bobcat subspecies, Lynx rufus escuinapae, is listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is confined to central Mexico. A subspecies is a local kind within a species, and endangered means close to vanishing; habitat loss is the main threat to bobcats. As of November 2026, the bobcat's conservation status is Least Concern.
Female bobcats can breed at 1 year of age, and males become sexually mature at 2 years; kittens are born about 62 days after mating. A mother usually has two or three kittens at a time; a young bobcat is called a kitten. A litter is the group of kittens born together; a newborn kitten weighs 10 to 12 ounces. It opens its eyes at about 10 days old; at about four weeks old, kittens begin to leave the den. They drink their mother's milk for about two months; young bobcats leave their mother in their first fall or winter, when they are about 8 months old. Some bobcats live up to 12 years in the wild. In zoos and other managed care, bobcats have a median life expectancy of about 18 years. A median is the middle value, so half the bobcats counted live shorter lives than that and half live longer.
Words to know
- carnivore: meat eater
- subspecies: local kind
- endangered: close to vanishing
- collared: wearing trackers
- generalists: uses many habitats
