Mike Sullivan, a very intelligent bar clerk at Johnsonburg, Elk County,
called the writer’s attention to the length of the tail of a mounted
cat in the hotel at that prosperous lumber town. “A great many wild cat
hides, taken in Elk, McKean, and Forest Counties are shipped to a fur
dealer in town,” said Sullivan, “and I have been struck by the length
of their tails. I put a foot rule on this one, and it measured exactly
twelve inches. That cat, I am told, weighed forty-one pounds. We have
quite a few varieties of cats in these parts. First of all, there is
the Canada Lynx, grey in color, with tabs on his ears and hair on the
soles of his feet; a big, fierce fellow, often weighing fifty pounds.
He has always been a scarce cat, even the Indians say he was never
plentiful. Secondly, there is the true wild cat, or ‘Bob’ cat, reddish
in color, mottled like a fawn, smaller than the Canadian Lynx, but
with a longer tail. Thirdly, there is the tame cat gone wild--escaped
from lumber camps and the like. Some of these grow very big, and in
one or two generations are brindled and bushy tailed. Many people
call them ‘coon cats.’ Then we have the fourth kind, the mixture,
hybrid or mongrel, whatever you call it, between the Canada Lynx and
the Wild Cat, or Bay Lynx. In my opinion, that cat on yonder shelf is
a cross between a lynx and a Bob Cat. Old hunters tell me that the
product of that cross has a longer tail than either lynx or Bob Cat--a
throw back to the type of long ago. There may also be crosses between
lynxes and Bob Cats and tame cats gone wild; it happened in the old
country, why not here?” The above observations, which have also been
advanced by C. W. Dickinson, of Smethport, have a considerable element
of common-sense to them. In deer breeding there is a tendency to throw
back to good-headed, or poor headed ancestors, as the case may be. In
South Carolina there are frequent cases of palmation in the deer, due
to some English fallow bucks liberated by planters in the Eighteenth
Century. A cross between two varieties of short-tailed lynxes might
provide a longer tailed type. In other respects the cat in the
Johnsonburg house showed an accentuation of characters. Its hind legs
were apparently twice the thickness of the front legs, and very much
longer. It was an unsymmetrical animal. Perhaps much of this was due
to faulty taxidermy, but that would not account for the length of the
tail. Its color, a darker grey than the true lynx, was almost of a drab
hue. It was darker about the head, but there were no regular spots. The
Canada Lynx early succumbed to changed conditions in his faunal zone,
the forest fire, the clearing, the drained swamp, the passing of the
northern hare, but for a time his blood will live on in the crossbreed
with the more adaptable Bay Lynx. As these long tailed cats are said
to be plentiful in the wilder sections of Northwestern Pennsylvania,
it may be that this new race will possess the power to best endure
existing conditions--though S. N. Rhoads says that such a cross would
be infertile.