__SANIBEL -- Talk about a fat cat — a regular feline butterball.
__But this cat, a 1 1/2-year-old male bobcat, is better off now then when he arrived at Care and Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW) in early October with a shattered right leg, the result of a run-in with a car near Oritz Avenue in Fort Myers.
__In a two-hour operation on October 13, Fort Myers orthopedic surgeon Bo Kagan and surgical technician Walt Smith, using $10,000 in Columbia Regional Medical Center equipment, repaired the fracture.
__X-rays show the injury healed, and CROW officials will release the cat in about three months. But first, he needs to trim down a little.
__At the time of the operation, the bobcat weighed 11 pounds. Now it weighs 26.
__"That's a normal weight, but it's less muscle and more fat," CROW veterinarian Chris Kreuder said. "He's not doing his physical therapy as we'd hoped. He's taking it easy."
__"We've put him on a diet, and we're feeding him live prey, hoping the increased effort will change some of the fat to muscle."
__The cat eats about five live rats a day, but he only comes down off the elevated shelf in his 35-by-20-foot enclosure to catch his supper.
__He spends the rest of the time playing lazy on the shelf.
__To increase the cat's activity, and to help melt some fat, Kreuder will put him in CROW's new 120-by-15-foot eagle enclosure when it's finished in a few days.
__Unlike the cat's current home, which has a concrete floor, the eagle cage is built over natural growth with natural vegetation. And it doesn't have a shelf.
__In a more natural habitat, the cat will revert to wilder behavior, Kreuder said, roaming his new territory, digging holes, stalking and killing wild rodents and birds that blunder into the cage.
__With all that exercise, the cat will tone up pretty quickly.
__"I don't know how much fat he has on him," Kreuder said, "But he's something like an adult female human, and he's got to get down to an Olympic swimmer."

Story by Kevin Lollar of the Fort Myers News-Press