Imagine a cat twice the size of your house cat weighing about 20 pounds with large ears that have pointed tufts of hair at the ends. The bobcat has an orange-tan pelt with black stripes on the face and spots on the body. The top of their tail is black with a white underside.
Bobcats have a white chest and belly, but the belly is heavily spotted.
These spots and the color of their coat helps camouflage the bobcat in the thick underbrush. The bobcat can be confused with the real lynx, but you can tell them apart by knowing that the bobcat is smaller in size, that they have irregular dark markings only on the top half of their tail, and they have shorter tufts of hair on their ears. The tracks of the bobcat are also just slightly larger than a house cat, but the lynx s tracks are more than 4 inches across. The snowshoe hare and cottontail rabbit are the major prey of Wisconsin bobcats. These cats will look for sick, injured, very young or old white-tailed deer if a rabbit meal isn t easily available.