Is this a bobcat?

[Handforged]

Many years ago like 40 or 50 the fur buyer used to give any wheres' from 2 to 5 dollars for nice colored feral cats.The tabby colored ones brought the most.I've seen some very big ones before too.
Nowadays with fur prices being down so much feral cats are every where here.We personally on the farm have around 15 to 20 of them we feed.We keep them around to keep the mice at bay.They do their job well.
Before them I had problems of mice chewing lots of things that cost me a fair amount of money to replace.
A funny story with a good ending somewhat.......Before cats living here mice had the run of the place.I had traps everywhere.Including in my vehicles.Even in the glove compartments.Disgusting!!!
One time I went to start my pick up.It started but would'nt stay idiling good.Very odd as it was a good runner.I got it going steady by feathering the gas pedal,but it still would'nt stay idling.
So I raced the engine a bit.After around 3 to 4 minutes I'd say I heard this whistling sound of various tones coming from underneath my truck.I stayed with it keeping it running,figuring there was something plugging the muffler.There was a point when it barely could stay running when all of a sudden a huge KA-BANG came from underneath the truck.At that moment the truck started idling normally but with straight pipes.
I backed up to see what blew out from my truck.Here there was a ball of congealed dog food in a ball laying there along with my muffler.Apparently the mice had horded and packed my muffler with dog food.The only way they could do that is to steal it from the dogs pans.
The pick up was fine yet.
Anyway when an old feral mother cat started hanging around here I started feeding her.She tamed easily.One heck of a hunter.Seen her with cotton tailed rabbits taken to her kittens.It is from her and her 5th and 6th generations of cats that we now still have cats and NO mice problems.
The End.
On a side note though those feral cats are very hard on our quail and pheasant populations.They catch song birds regularly at the bird feeder too.

I grew up on a large farm. Grandparents brought a few feral cats there to kill mice in the 50's. When I was a kid that number was up to 40-50 cats. Spread out across a few thousand acres of land and many barns. One day my Pa came up to the house and said Get your 22.  He had gone out to one of the storage barns and those cats had started opening bags of sweet feed and eating it apparently. There was about 20 bags clawed open and ruined with cats sitting there chomping on it. Pa told me then he'd give me a dollar for every one I drug up in the yard. I spent that summer hunting them like lions in Africa. I'd get a couple, he'd pay me and on it went. When I got to 30 he told me to knock it off or we wouldn't have any cats at all! Needless to say the one that were left were wild and weary. You couldn't get 100 yards to one of them. We never had a problem with them tearing up feed bags again either.

[BowEd]

I farmed myself most my life as did my father before me,my grandfather and so on for many generations.It's what we know.When storing grain on the farm as was done always for livestock and to sell it is essential to have a good number of cats around to keep the vermin at bay from our grain bins of oats and corn.When we shelled to sell or ground ear corn for livestock there would be a couple dozen cats around to catch the mice.Along with a couple good yard dogs too.We had quite the numbers of cats also.
We always supplemented our cats also with regular cat food most times.They had a job and they did it well.They were not pets but employees to the farm.
If you've ever seen a farms' buildings overrun by rats a person will see the value they are,and you'll never have enough .22 bullets to kill all the rats.The damage they can do to grain and buildings is very costly.A lot more than having cats around to suppress them.Even poisoning them does'nt slow them down if they get bad enough and the cost of poison is a lot more than keeping the cats around.
As kids on the farm we do things sometimes without seeing the big picture.I know I've been guilty of it.My father trusted me with a .22 too at a very young age,but started me with a BB and then a pellet gun first.
The feral cats the way I see it do do a fair amount of damage to our quail and pheasants along with the owls,hawks,coyotes,bobcats,and fox but they get after the field mice themselves too,and somehow I keep seeing new coveys of quail and hatches of pheasants yet too.
When mother cats here have kittens I see them almost every early morn coming out of the woods and fields carrying a mouse in their mouth and also see chipmunks that have been caught in the cat shed too.
What will kill the farm cat  and smaller pet dogs around here is the old coyote.Especially around places occupied by elderly couples or possibly disabled that don't get outside or show activity on the yard much.The coyotes will get emboldened enough to come onto the yard to kill cats in broad daylight.Especially into the deepest or coldest part of the winter when food gets pretty scarce.