Cats and dogs

A couple of days ago, we had our first snow. It snowed close to 4" and brought down a carpet of golden aspen leaves still glowing on the snow.

Just after that snow, I had a spooky experience that I wrote about two days ago. I was riding my snow mountain bike (Fatback) that has 4" wide tires when I discovered that a mountain lion had walked in my tire tracks very shortly after I made them so he was someplace very close to me in the forest.

I wanted a size scale so that I could measure the lion track size later so I put my chemical hand warmer in the photo. It is 7.7 cm on its long side. By using that as my scale, I determined that the heel pad was 4.2 cm wide. That is not a big heel pad for a mountain lion, and puts this lion clearly in the female or young adult category.

I immediately knew that these were lion tracks based on a couple of things. First, the size - they were much too big to be a bobcat's tracks. Next, the asymmetry of the track, where the left half looks different from the right half. In dogs and coyotes, the track is much more symmetrical (and usually smaller). Third, there were no claw marks. Mountain lions, like other cats, have retractable claws. Finally, a unique characteristic is that the roughly triangular heel pad has a "bicuspid" apex. You can barely see it in the photo above but it was very obvious in person.

I was hoping that the mountain lion had hopped back onto the animal path after I departed and would pass my wildlife camera that he'd been heading toward. Alas, I had no such luck. I think that the mountain lions are as afraid of humans as we are of them. Consequently, this young one abandoned the established animal path after discovering that I was nearby.

I did, however, get bobcat photos. In the photo below, a bobcat is staring at a bear "whammy" tree that the bears rub their backs on during mating season and just before hibernation. This camera is set up to get photos of a bear marking the tree but it got a bobcat instead.

Then, the bobcat passed closer to the camera.

I have captured a plethora of bobcat photos all in the area where the mother and kitten lived this summer. However, I haven't captured a photo of the two of them together since the day when they appeared to "lose track of each other" a month ago. I plan to do a post soon showing you all the various photos to see if you agree with me that both the mother and kitten are still alive and well - they are simply moving around the territory separately.

Our snow has rapidly melted and we are enjoying some true autumn weather. K has been romping and I have been rolling with joy in our hearts!

 However, as you can see, it's still wintery up high in the mountains.

Based on the bank of clouds over the Divide today, I took lots of extra clothes in my backpack for my mountain bike ride. Of course, by doing so, I caused it to be a very warm day! As I learned last week, it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to potential hypothermia.

On an unrelated note, we just learned that K has MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, in her urinary tract. Do any of you have experience with dogs and MRSA? We have no further information yet concerning treatment or the prognosis. She seems to feel normal despite the infection.