ORRINGTON – Tim Falvey heard the dogs across the street, he saw his two house cats squaring off with an animal in the driveway, and he looked out his window with one thought.

“That’s one big cat,” he said of the bobcat he shot on Tuesday.

In fact, it was a small female, probably not a year old, based on the estimates of Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologist Tom Shaeffer.

But with his 9-year-old daughter, Shannon, stepping off the school bus across the street, Falvey didn’t want her to walk in on a cat fight, and he didn’t think it was a fight his cats would win, so he shot the bobcat with his 12-gauge shotgun.

“I hated to shoot him. I didn’t know what direction he would go in. He hunched up. And my crazy male cat went at him. He looked huge with his paws raised and teeth bared,” said Falvey, who estimated its weight at 15 pounds.

Shaeffer said unless a bobcat is cornered and threatened, it is unlikely to attack a person. But when the snow is deep and a hard winter persists, smaller bobcats can be found seeking food in residential areas.

The area the biologist oversees, which encompasses Orrington, and Washington and Hancock counties, is a stronghold for bobcats. The forest growth and moderate coastal climate makes conditions ideal for them.

Shaeffer said this year’s heavy snow is the reason young bobcats are being found up and down Maine’s coast in back yards, under porches, and around chicken pens.

“It’s a hard situation on the young animals. They are not adept at hunting. If prey, like snowshoe hare, is in short supply, the young ones suffer the quickest,” Shaeffer said. “We’ve seen a fair amount of this over the last several winters.”

Falvey said in recent years a lot of house cats have gone missing in Orrington off the Snows Corner Road, and some neighbors have suspected it’s bobcat.

Shaeffer disagreed, saying the poaching is more likely done by fox, fishers, or coyotes.

At the same time, Shaeffer said, the bobcat population is strong, one indication being the absence of snowshoe hare, a point the biologist finds troubling.

His staff recently completed a general index of the population in the region, and found it to be low.

Shaeffer attributes the low snowshoe population to coyotes and domestic cats as much as bobcats. But he said there is no shortage of bobcats.

“People are reporting fighting cats, hunters chasing cats in good numbers just like the good old days,” Shaeffer said. “People are saying they’re seeing numbers of bobcats like they haven’t seen in 10-15 years.”

While bobcats are quite common living on the edge of towns, they are not typically found in cities, so Shaeffer said folks in Brewer and Bangor aren’t likely to share Falvey’s experience.

“It’s the first one I’ve seen and I’ve lived here 12 years,” Falvey said. “I see a lot of deer and coyotes. Never a bobcat.”

Deirdre Fleming covers outdoor sports and recreation for the NEWS. She can be reached at 990-8250 or at dfleming@bangordailynews.net.