Kelowna resident spots bobcat wandering outside downtown apartment building 

Photo: Contributed

A bobcat wanders next to a car in a carport along Leon Avenue in Kelowna on Jan. 5, 2025.

A Kelowna man snapped photos of a fluffy wildcat outside his apartment building on Leon Avenue on Sunday afternoon.

He thinks it could be the same bobcat spotted outside the Hotel Eldorado on Friday.

Gary was looking out a window at 797 Leon Ave. when he saw the bobcat walking through a carport.

He said the animal was wandering underneath vehicles, went next door and then came back to the building. That’s when it nearly had an encounter with a couple of people on the street.

“It was coming around the corner and there were people walking and I yelled down to them, 'hey, woah, woah, there’s a bobcat right around the corner.'

“I said to them, I don’t know how dangerous they are, but you don’t want to confront them, corner them,” he explained.

Photo: Contributed

The bobcat nearly came face to face with some pedestrians.

He was also concerned about pet dogs in the building, so he kept an eye on the bobcat.

“It went over to the east side of our building and then it hopped up onto the wall and climbed under a little white fence we have, and then it took off.”

Gary compared his photos to those taken at the Hotel Eldorado on Friday and thought the cat he saw looks very similar with almost identical markings on its back end.

He grew up in northern Ontario and has seen a lynx before but this was his first bobcat sighting.

According to WildSafeBC, bobcats are generally smaller than lynx, with shorter legs, smaller paws, and shorter ear tufts. Still, they can be hard to tell apart – even for experts.

Photo: Contributed