BOBCAT YEAR<i> by Hope Ryden (Lyons & Burford: $14.95</i> ,<i> illustrated) </i>

In this anthropomorphized account of the first months of an American bobcat’s life (based on three years of observation in the Idaho deserts), Hope Ryden offers a rather skewed vision of a benevolent nature. Evil is something external, introduced by the vicious male humans who trap animals for their furs. (She has somewhat less to say about the females who wear the resulting coats.) The carcass of a rabbit slain by a bobcat represents nourishment that ensures survival of the fittest; the carcass of a bobcat shot by a hunter is “a red obscenity.”

The book also suffers from some embarrassing overwriting: A cat isn’t just falling, he’s “falling, falling like a meteorite, plummeting without wings to beat against the awesome suck of gravity, without membranes to spread like braking sails.” Didn’t anyone at Lyons & Burford bother to edit this manuscript? If Ryden had chosen a less strident approach to the problems of predator conservation, she might have won readers to her cause, but in its present form, “Bobcat Year” will appeal only to rabid foes of hunting.