Wild Cat 
and remains perfectly motionless, watching and listening, intent 
to learn whether it is an enemy to be avoided or possibly 
game for his dinner. In the latter case he creeps forward with 
the utmost caution, planning, if possible, to head off his victim 
in order to seize it at the first alarm. When out hunting, the 
bob cat utters a wild scream from time to time; its object 
evidently is to startle any creature that may be in hiding near 
by into betraying its presence by a startled jump. 
And certainly any animal would require strong nerves to 
remain unmoved when this jarring yell bursts through the still- 
ness close at hand. It has been described as a low sort of 
growling, followed by a sudden quick repeated caterwaul, or 
yang-yang-yang. | have frequently heard just such a cry in the 
woods at night, but have to confess that I have never been 
able to trace it to the creature that made it. 
Following up these various voices of the night is baffling 
work at all times, and there is still much confusion of ideas re- 
garding them and much yet to be learned. 
I have more than once heard a red fox utter a scream that 
would do credit to a cougar, and the farmers here in New Hamp- 
shire tell me that the skunk has a most blood-curdling yell of 
its own. How much truth there is in this I am unable to say, 
but the belief is too widely held in these parts to be wholly 
overlooked. 
Wild cats roam about in the twilight of early morning and 
evening more than at midday. They sleep in hollow trees and 
caverns among the rocks and ledges, and in some such place 
in a warm nest of leaves they hide their kittens. In warm 
weather they like to doze in the sun, either stretched along a 
horizontal bough or curled up in a little patch of sunlight in 
the midst of a berry-patch. They wander about all winter in 
the snow and cold, living as best they may, stalking hares 
and grouse among the evergreen, or watching patiently beside 
a squirrel-hole in a tree-top, just as a domestic cat will stand 
guard at a mouse-hole in the barn. 
They resemble the domestic cat in a number of ways, being 
great mousers and destroyers of small birds and their nests, and 
equally fond of catnip, rolling over and over in the  strong- 
scented herbs and rubbing it into their fur and eating the blos- 
soms and leaves. 
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