Catching N.Y. Wildlife Isn’t the Cat’s Meow

Bobcat, Ralph Ferrara asked the animal protection officers who had stepped into his three-room apartment. What bobcat?

Then Daisy started growling.

“So they look under the dining room table, and under the dining room table, under a piece of cloth, is the bobcat,” said Jeffrey Hon, a spokesman for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “The bobcat weighs 30 pounds and is seemingly very vicious.”

The officers, alerted by a neighbor’s complaint of a wild animal in the Queens building, had found their prey. Their next step was obvious, Hon said. “They take refuge in the bedroom.”

The encounter was not all that unusual for the ASPCA, which enforces animal cruelty laws in the city. “At least once a year we get a really weird case. We had a lion out in Staten Island once. Somebody had it living in their garage.”

‘Could Jump You if It Wanted’

This time it was Daisy, a healthy 5-year-old female bobcat, declawed but “very, very fast,” Hon said. “It could jump you if it wanted to.” Its lair was Ferrara’s apartment, decorated with porcelain cat heads and stocked with cat-related videos.

“The guy’s really into cats,” Hon said.

When the officers arrived, Ferrara tried to throw them off the scent by denying that he had a bobcat but saying he once had an ocelot that died. He displayed a cremation certificate and a sympathy card from the Long Island Ocelot Club.

But the cat-and-mouse game ended when Daisy growled.

“The guy knows the jig is up,” Hon said.

Bobcat Gift From Friends

Ferrara, a 53-year-old executive secretary at a perfume company, said Daisy was a gift from friends and he did not know it was illegal to keep a wild animal as a pet in New York City. He said Daisy stayed at home, was paper trained, ate cat food and chicken gizzards and occasionally even paid him attention.

“She’s a feline. She will do some things that I tell her. Other commands she will acknowledge but will only react to them if she feels like it,” he said. “She had the run of the place.”

Friendly? “To me, yes.”

To ASPCA officers, apparently not. They called police, who arrived an hour later and shot Daisy with two tranquilizer darts. Freed from their bedroom retreat, the officers confiscated the cat and gave Ferrara a ticket. They took Daisy into custody while they sought an appropriate home.