An animal so widespread in its range as the wild cat doubtless has had
many diversified types, even sub-species. Hunted for the most part
by unscientific persons, no descriptions have been kept, all have
been classed alike in the bounty records. A few years ago, while in
conversation with the venerable artist and nature-lover, C. H. Shearer,
of Reading, the subject turned to wild cats. “Are you aware,” said the
old naturalist, “that the wild cats from the Blue Mountains east to the
Delaware were vastly different from the cats found in other parts of
Pennsylvania? I am not certain of any marked difference between, say,
the cats of Potter County and those of Fulton County, except perhaps
that they reached the maximum of size in the central part of the State,
in the Seven Mountains. But in the Blue Mountains, and on Penn’s Mount,
we used to take a cat vastly different from the cats of the Juniata
country. In my opinion the Blue Mountain cat was the ‘mountain cat’
described by Loskiel. Its coloring, according to that early observer,
was ‘reddish or orange colored hair, with black streaks.’ As a boy
I used to trap many of these cats in Irish Gap and at the head of
the Schwartzbach, back of Tuckerton. These cats were short-coupled,
compact, rather short-legged, with long, wavy fur, much like the modern
pet Angoras in confirmation, except for the short tails. Ten or
fifteen pound cats were big specimens. In winter time they were pale
greyish colored, like the Canada Lynx; in summer, orange color, and
instead of being dappled were striped like tigers. When I first saw
the cats in Central Pennsylvania I was struck by the difference--the
Juniata cats were so ungainly, with higher hind legs than front legs,
they were usually so meagre looking, their noses were longer. When I
was a boy, before the Civil War, Blue Mountain cats were common in all
the hilly regions in Berks, Lancaster, Lebanon and Lehigh Counties.
I have not seen one since about 1870.” The writer at once started
on a search for the hide of a Blue Mountain cat, being rewarded by
securing a fine hide, corresponding exactly to Shearer’s descriptions.
The hide was of a mature bore cat in its winter coat, which had been
killed, according to Paul Weber, the Reading taxidermist, in the Blue
Mountains, near Millersburg, in 1864. In color it closely resembles a
Canada Lynx; its legs are very short. A large stuffed wild cat in the
bar room of the hotel at Upper Bern, Berks County, said to have been
killed in the Blue Mountains near Shartlesville in 1892, has none of
these characteristics. It is a typical Bay Lynx. William Henne, a wild
cat hunter of Strausstown, Berks County, declares that for a time both
varieties existed in the Blue Mountains.