We are in the living room watching the Suns lose Game Six. Dejected I get up and go to the kitchen, mostly to walk away from the loss when out of the corner of my eye I see something flickering by the tree outside. I can only see it’s back, but a large animal is getting water at our water bowl! First thought was maybe a neighbors dog until I saw the spots on the ears!

“NO WAY!” I semi yell whisper to my husband as I literally RAN for my phone and to a better filming spot.

Having absolutely no idea what has gotten into me, Jay follows me into our bedroom where I am glued to the window, motionless with my iPhone on video. There under our tree is a young looking, fairly thin but still good sized, bobcat! Tail flickering from the excitement of birds chirping emergency calls announcing this predators arrival. Panting from the heat, the cat settled in for a nice, long drink of water.

I fell in love instantly.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t breathe.

Right there before my eyes was a wild cat bigger than either of my two dogs. Gorgeous colors. Stripes and markings like a small tiger. Paws the size of my husbands fists. I wanted nothing to scare this glorious creature away.

When the bobcat was done it turned and walked toward our kitchen. I flew passed Jay to not miss any action! Sure enough I was met with possibly the prettiest, biggest cat eyes I have ever seen staring right back at me. Not alarmed, it looked me in the eye, curious, just not as equally enamored. With the nonchalance a cat that size can afford, it turned away from my stare and wandered down the hill out of my sight. I was outside of myself with excitement! Did that really just happen?

Timing had been everything.

Now all I could think was “How much was I missing regularly?”.

Of course I posted the bobcat videos everywhere I could, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Linkd In, fully expecting millions upon millions of views! HA! Nope. Though popular with my friends and followers, my bobcat sighting had only changed MY world. For everyone else, where viral videos come at you in multiples daily, it was more of a “That’s really cool Stace, your house is crazy” type of response. Oddly enough, my slow motion video of rain drops has over 4k views on Instagram and climbing but my incredibly gorgeous bobcat only made it to a little over 2k. I really don’t get algorithms.

If I thought I suffered from FOMO ( Fear Of Missing Out) before, well this experience just magnified it! How was I supposed to walk by any window and not look to see if by chance my love was nearby? I can’t. I don’t. I’m still looking.