Male lynx being treated at BC Wildlife Park

Lynx are not typically found wandering the streets of Kamloops. They tend to stick to higher elevations and remain far from people. But, earlier this week, one of these reclusive cats was spotted taking a stroll through a North Shore neighbourhood.

“The Conservation Officer Service had been called about it several times, so they were keeping their eye on it,” said Tracy Reynolds, animal care supervisor at the B.C. Wildlife Park. “They had hoped it would move on like a lot of wildlife should, but this one was reluctant to do so. They went and investigated and deemed if they were able to catch it, they contacted us to see if we were able to take it in, which we did do.”

The lynx is now being treated at the Fawcett Family Wildlife Health Centre. Reynolds says the centre is working to determine what is wrong.

“We are not 100 per cent sure what’s wrong, but it definitely has an infection going on in its abdomen,” she said. “Outwardly there’s nothing that you could see wrong with it, but upon investigation… We did have to sedate it, obviously to do a full exam and then saw fluid in the abdomen, which indicated an infection.”

Reynolds says the infection could be the result of a number of factors, including disease or trauma.

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“We have him on antibiotics already, right away we put him on the antibiotics,” Reynolds said. “We’re going to just try and support it and then we’re going to do some further diagnostics today to see if we can get a little bit better understanding of what is actually going on.”

If the cat responds well to treatment he will be released back into the wild.