(Animals) The wild trail of the bobcat

[Askor lml]

There were few of us who the other Sunday preferred to attend an outreach day in Viladrau about the wild cat instead of, what do I know, play paddle tennis or go looking for tickets. They, those who opted for other, much less interesting ways of using the day, missed it: it was exciting.
The wild cat (Felis silvestris) or wild cat -the British wildcat-, which in Catalan we know as gat fer, is a small but stout and fierce little beast, solitary, surly and aggressive, wonderful, that lives quietly in our forests and together with the lynx, they are currently the only species of wild cats in Europe. It's a shame not to have tigers, lions or leopards (all of which we had in prehistoric times, when walks in the countryside were supposed to be much more exciting), but the positive side is that now there is nothing that can eat you and start a Sinister career as a man-eater from the Montseny in the style of the spotted devil of Gummalapur or the striped terror of the Chamala valley. The wild cat, of a bland nature, can give you a scare, essentially if you piss him off, corner him or is a female with young, and there have been very exceptional cases of attacks on humans (the death of a certain Percival is accredited Cresacre, although it was in York in 1477), but the truth is that meeting one of those elusive and extraordinary animals is something exciting and as rare and portentous as winning the lottery.

So, with my usual enthusiasm for these things, I went to the Espai Montseny where the event El Gat Fer was held, el felí dels nostres boscos, which included a traveling exhibition on the bug, with attention to its presence in the Montseny area and Guilleries, and a didactic program consisting of an informative conference and a “family” outing to visit the wild cat habitat. The excursion seemed to imply the observation of an individual, something quite unlikely given that, as has been said, the wild cat, "ghost of our forests", is not seen by his aunt.

I myself, for example, I go out a lot in the mountains, I move silently Comanche style, I disguise myself as a Russian sniper and I have had unusual experiences with the ciborium - once I was circled around, within arm's reach, a genet (gat mesquer) in what I interpreted as a courtship pattern - I have only seen a wild cat in Viladrau in fifty years. And it was pure churro: I was hidden one evening behind a tree observing in the fields of Can Batllic a badger that was eating the fallen fruits of a fig tree when a gat fer crossed my line of sight, moving with the overwhelming arrogance and at the same time the dissimulation of a Shere Khan in small. It was an unforgettable sight. Even more so because I carry the wild cat in my heart - and the image it seems of Kate from The Taming of the Shrew, where by the way Shakespeare compares the wild cat with the wayward girl. I have been doing it since I was 12 when I read The Wild Cat, by Allan W. Eckert (Molino, 1969), a beautiful novel starring a hybrid of a domestic cat and a bobcat, what they call a wildcat in North America, where our Felis does not exist. silvestris, and which is actually the bobcat (Linx Rufus).

In the story, a beautiful story of nature, adventure and love for animals, the little mongrel is rescued and cared for by a boy, Toddy, who names him Yowler, howler (although he does not seem to have read Allen Ginsberg) , and that he escapes with the feline when his father wants to shoot him. The novel, in which the wild cat is lost and travels to the bayous of Louisiana, is very emotional and has clear influences from Huckelberry Finn and the Call of the Wild. Eckert, by the way, is the author of the famous Incident at Hawk’s Hill, a novel in which a child is cared for by a badger.

The Espai Montseny de Viladrau is a dynamic and spectacular center on the outskirts of town that serves as a tourist information point for the Montseny Natural Park and which hosts exhibitions and other activities. It occupies an immense and absolutely unique building, the Park Hotel, with the absurd air of a southern mansion like Gone with the Wind, built in the fifties and which, abandoned by its owner, was never inaugurated. In Viladrau it has always been the case that the project of a large luxury hotel and casino failed as gambling was not authorized then, as expected, in Spain. For almost half a century the building deteriorated until it looked like a cursed Stephen King house (the Martens mansion or the Overlook Hotel) and teenagers used to sneak into it to hunt bats, tell each other horror stories or, bigger, replace the romantic fields of the Uncle Leopoldo on rainy days. Refurbished with funds from the European Union, it is now a cultural center devoted to nature.

Anyway, there I was, in the Alicia de Larrocha room of the renovated old Park Hotel, named in honor of the pianist, with so many roots in Viladrau (married to Joan Torra and a vacationer in Can Torra since the 1950s). The photos of the artist on the walls contrasted with the theme of the wild cat, far removed from music other than that of Orpheus, who tamed the beasts. Ferran Sayol and Xavier Soler, who work on the Gat Fer project, devoted to animal research in Catalonia and especially to determining the state and distribution of its po[CENSORED]tions, were waiting for the public to arrive. When it was clear that no one else was coming, they began the session. There were five of us, including the two of them. Since the others were the director of the Monografies del Montseny -who asked them for an article- and a companion, we were like family. "Well, it's a very good day, it's normal that people prefer to do other things," the biologist Sayol started with great sportsmanship.

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