Humboldt Wildlife Care Center Needs Community Support to Raise Up This Baby Ring-tailed Cat
The Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is looking for support for the community to get this little guy raised up enough to make it on his own.
They reported this morning,
A very young Ring-tailed Cat, a small adorable and ferocious cousin of the Raccoon, who was separated from his mother has been in care the last 4 days, with about a 75 to go before he’ll be old enough and ready to be on his own!
We sustain them monthly with a small gift but, you can give a one time donation or join us in monthly gifts here.
The Humboldt Wildlife Care Center says, “[I]f you want to help this little guy make it back to the Wild, please donate!…Your support is the only thing that keeps our doors open for all wild neighbors when the need arises (all day long every day during baby season!).”
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I’ve only seen one once. Had to avoid it in the road. I thought it was someone’s exotic. Googled and found out we actually have them! Very cool animals!
Saw one climb straight up a 10 foot vertical garage wall with no real ledges for support when I startled him. Spider-Man animal and Amazing.
Yes. One of our coolest little critters. I remember my shock seeing one for the first time
They get hit quite often unfortunately.
I usually see them at night in steep Bluffy areas
I’ve been giving monthly for a while now. It’s especially important during these inflationary times. I’ve seen one of these adult critters close up, but only once – they’re amazing and what long tails!
One moved into my cabin while I was gone one winter, into the broiler of the stove. But I wanted to broil. We had a face-off one night, I opened the broiler and the front door, and sat reading on the other side of the cabin. The critter came out, stopped and glared at me, and slowly trudged out the door. I’d be happy to meet another one, much more reasonable than raccoons!
Fun fact: ringtails are not cats at all. They are great hunters of mice too.
Cute little feller…
Correct. They are northern-most members of the tropical relatives of our common raccoon. Think coatimundi of Mexico. Ringtails can’t take much cold so they stay near the coast in western N. America. Our neighbors near Eureka recorded a family cruising their backyard at night. Very large bright eyes form a triangle with small nose in surveillance footage. Long, ringed-tail like a sport raccoon. Very beneficial critters like fishers and martens. Might still be on the California endangered species list. I wonder if they are any more vicious than any such animal in a scary situation.
No. They are very timid peaceful little guys.
I found one in a Victor number 2 leg trap.
At first I was going to put him out of his misery but he closed his eyes and Readied for the blow
I was afraid of him but more than he was of me.
I was able to open the jaws of the trap and he scampered off.
I took the trap home and heat treated it so it will never work again
I saw a group of 5-7 near the summit on Denny Rd. years ago. I guess that group adapted to the cold
Super cool animals to spot
They also called them Miner’s Cats. They were known for hanging out in close proximity to people in their little pioneer shacks. They’d come out at night and hunt mice while the miners slept.
The Wildlife Care Center are an awesome group, well worth a donation. I came home to a find turkey vulture with a broken wing on my driveway. No idea what to do, so I called the Care Center within 15 minutes two friendly workers showed up to to try to capture it, unfortunately we couldn’t locate it. Still they spent an hour walking the property and told me to call back if I saw it again. Ugly old vultures are just as precious as baby kittens. They really care about animals, and they are doing something about it.
Thank you to the Wildlife Care Center!
Pls. send an address. I’d like to send a donation for the animal you rescued!❤thanks
Baby vultures are one of the ugliest, coolest birds. They are born in hollow old growth stumps, quite often redwood. The stumps I have seen them in are usually on slopes just below ridges. From the uphill side looking down in, the stump depths to the inner ground floor ranged from 8’ to 15’. The babies are born and live on the ground and are protected by the deep inner walls of the stump. Seemingly, any predator that went in to get them couldn’t get back up the vertical walls and out. When you first see them you will be startled because they look like a cross between a mini dinosaur and a swamp creature. If you are in the vicinity when they are being noisy, you will wonder where the heck that sound is coming from because it sounds like it is in a hollow chamber underground. Check out the hollow stumps, it could be baby vultures looking up at you. You will be shocked.
Don’t want to seem as crass but are these donations tax deductible?
Yes
One of their nicknames is “miner’s cats”, because years ago miners kept them in their cabins to eliminate vermin – rats and mice. A friend with an old cabin on a plateau above the Eel on Sanhedrin was making his biannual visit to the place with his teenage son. They found the cabin in a shambles – bears had broken in and all of nature seemed to have visited. As they sorted through the wreckage, a ringtail made an appearance, sitting on a high shelf. “Oh wow!” cried the lad, “That’s so cool!! Can we keep him?” In the next instant, the varmint leapt through the air onto his head and pissed on it. They decided against adoption.
I feel naive for asking, but I’ve been in humboldt my entire life and I’ve never seen, nor heard of one of these lol. Is this little critter actually native to the area?
Oh yes, Southwest Oregon, California, Mexico and more
&action=click The local you also likely haven’t seen is Aplodontia rufa humboldtianna Ranges from the VanDuzan to the Klamath. 
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Mountain Beaver, also wonderful little creatures
Shucks, thanks…
Are those nutria?
No relation to Nutria, closest relatives are squirrels. Aplodonia rufe are the last living members of the family Aplodontiidae, the size of a house cat and host to the worlds largest fleas. The Corp of Discovery had two presentation coats created while overwintering at Fort Clatsop. One being Bobcat the other Sewellel, predator and prey.
Think of a big hillbilly prairie dog living singly beside a mountain stream or spring.
Happy to say that minks seem to be making a comeback. And I actually saw a porcupine not long ago. I thought they’d been pretty much wiped out long ago by ranchers. Another native critter is the fisher cat, a fierce member of the weasel family. I have very mixed feelings about them – they are beautiful animals, but they have the aggressive nature of a wolverine (though smaller) and are very fond of domestic cats (for breakfast, lunch and dinner). They have been known to come through cat doors and attack kitties that thought they were safe inside. Terrible!
Big mahalo to everyone who donates to help this little cutie.
The Witchpec bluffs or burnt ranch bluffs at night is where we see them the most.
I’ve seen them higher up in elevation where redwoods start transitioning to Doug fir, in So Hum. Only at night.
Im donating what i can on the immediate. cool cats, deep woods.
I grew up with these guys backpacking the palm oasis’ of So Cal and Baja deserts where they are officially called the Desert Ringtail. Camping on the giant house sized granite boulders whilst partaking in colorful recreationals under the full moon, one or two would come visit and put on a song and dance show on the sparkling granite stage that would enthrall us all…until we realized the rest of the clan was using the distraction to cleaning out our packs!
So it was my surprise when I got my ranch in the high snow country of Trinity county when I started finding headless chickens and found someone had moved in to the loft of the barn to live off the dog food stores that when I put out a live trap I found one of my old desert friends in it. After several weeks of battling wits to keep them out we ended up sealing the entire loft with chicken wire and cement, they can get into anything! Our homestead it turns out seems to be a popular breeding ground, you can hear them cooing in the trees all night long and not hard to find. When the Screech and Pygmy owls come in to breed here, also popular, along with the hordes of Chorus frogs in the pond, it produces some pretty exotic sounding nights.
They taste like chicken!
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