Brazen bobcat breaks into Nelson, B.C. home

A Nelson, B.C. family managed to capture a brazen four-legged intruder on camera after it wandered into their home Friday afternoon.

Leanne Kalabis says the bobcat entered her home when a basement door blew open.

The family had returned from a trip to town and heard some strange noises coming from the basement.

Kalabis says she saw the bobcat’s face first coming down her hallway and she thought the neighbour’s cat had got into her basement.

But this wasn’t a regular house cat.

The Nelson resident took her dog with her, and it was after coming face-to-face with the dog that the bobcat scaled the wall and ended up entangled in the window blinds.

“It was obviously very frightened and it was definitely lunging from the blinds and you could see its claws were coming out  and it was hissing and it was pretty ferocious,” says Kalabis.

“You definitely didn’t want to get near it.”

She says the cat couldn’t get itself out of the blinds and she called her neighbour over to ask for advice.

“So my initial reaction was I didn’t believe it because Leanne and her family are pranksters,” says Jim Noiles. “So I just walked over from next door and Leanne was just standing by the stairs and I said ‘right Leanne, there’s a bobcat in your curtains’.”

“And we sort of looked at each other and said ‘well, what do we do now?”

That is when the RCMP were called in to help with the intruder.

But it wasn’t the typical home invasion call police were expecting.

“It was so entangled a local, very brave, RCMP officer, Michael Stefani, came and very creatively, and carefully cut the bobcat free from the blinds,” says Kalabis.

When he arrived, Stefani says the bobcat didn’t appear to be injured, but was distraught and growling a lot.

Unable to safely approach the cat, he duct taped two brooms together with a knife at the end and used it to cut some of the strings of the blinds.

“I thought it was very clever, very ingenious, and there was no harm to the cat, and it makes for a great story,” says Noiles.

The bobcat fell to the ground and Stefani was able to coax it out of the basement using a painting as a shield. It then ran away.

Kalabis said it was a once-in-a-lifetime encounter.

“It’s not every day you have a bobcat in your basement, or are able to see one up so close,” she says.

The bobcat burglar didn’t take anything from the home, although it did cause significant damage to the blinds.