Of all the things I love, cats are one of my favorites, and the Grand Canyon Mesa has a variety of them. There are four species of cats that reside here in Arizona and three specifically on the Grand Canyon Mesa.
The Bobcat: inhabits all of Arizona, from the Sonoran Desert to the Colorado Plateau. Bobcats are about three times the size of a domestic housecat, have large, tufted ears, its namesake stubby tail, and its tannish-brown spotted coat. Bobcats flourish in a wide variety of habitats, including desert scrub, shrubland and conifer forest. Literally any small creature they can catch is prey to them (including domesticated ranch animals); and they will eat anything from frogs to deer, although the larger males are usually the ones hunting the much larger prey.
The Puma: also called cougar, mountain lion or panther though rarely seen, is also broadly distributed in Arizona. Large males (toms) may weigh up to 275 pounds. They have a thick uniformly colored tawny coat, a small head, muscular body and a long tail that will be about two thirds of its body length. These cats are lenghty and can be 5 1/2 to 8 feet long including their tails. Pumas may be encountered in many different habitat zones, although very uncommon in barren flat desert areas. This is a predatory animal which can pounce about 45 feet horizontally and 20 feet vertically. They primarily hunt mule and white-tailed deer, but will also hunt javelina, elk, porcupines, coyotes, rabbits and other varied prey; including chickens, turkeys, goats and other domesticated animals. A 2022 Arizona Game and Fish Department assessment estimated that there are between 2,500 and 3,000 pumas within the state.
The Jaguar: Typically, people associate these cats with tropical forests and wetlands of Central and South America, jaguars are also native to the American Southwest. In Arizona, the big cat historically ranged the Mardean Sky Islands, the Mogollon Rim and the Grand Canyon Mesa. No breeding populations are currently known, but several solitary jaguars, all thought to be males, have been documented in southeastern Arizona since the 1990s. The recovery of the jaguar in Arizona and elsewhere in the U.S. population partially depends on the populations in northern Mexico and the availability of protected lands and habitats. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated roughly 764,000 acres of “critical habitat” for the species in Arizona’s Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties, as well as a portion of Hidalgo County in New Mexico.
