Victoria HarbourCats Baseball Club

The Victoria HarbourCats are Victoria's entry in the West Coast League, a college-level, wood-bat baseball league with 12 teams from the Pacific Northwest that feature elite level college players from across North America. The HarbourCats will open their third season in June 2015 at picturesque SPORTS TRADERS DIAMOND at Royal Athletic Park in Victoria. Jim Swanson is the General Manager, Brad Norris-Jones is Assistant General Manager, and Graig Merritt is the Head Coach. Alec Adame is pitching coach. What exactly is a HarbourCat? HarbourCat [hahr-ber-kat] The HarbourCat (Felis portus) is a North American mammal of the cat family Felidae, first appearing in the Victoria area during the Non-Baseballian era of 2011-2012. It is a unique species, found predominantly in the Pacific Northwest region of Canada and the United States, including the southern portions of the Province of British Columbia and the States of Washington and Oregon. It is a migrational species, with members of its colony spending summers in the Pacific Northwest, but then dispersing to different parts of Canada and the U.S. during the fall, winter and spring seasons. The HarbourCat is an adaptable predator that inhabits the coastal, forest and urban ecosystems of Victoria and Vancouver Island, but is equally at home in the interior mountains and rangelands of British Columbia, Washington State and Oregon. It persists in much of its original range and populations are healthy. With a gray or white coat, whiskered face, dark navy blue-tufted ears and deep aqua blue markings on its nose, the HarbourCat resembles many other species of the Felidae family including the Puma, Lynx, Cougar, Bobcat, Jaguar, Panther and Leopard, but its distinct colours and markings make it a unique member among all the world’s cat families. HarbourCats tend to have lithe and flexible bodies with muscular limbs. They are fleet of foot when running and quick, agile and powerful when confronted or eluding attack from prey. HarbourCats typically range in height from 5’7” to 6’5” and can weigh anywhere from 150-250 pounds depending on age and maturity. Though the HarbourCat prefers a diet of sunflower seeds, Elks and Sweets, it will hunt anything from Bells, Knights, Gems, AppleSox and Falcons to BlueJackets. It has even been known, at times, to hunt Black Bears, particularly in the southwest portion of Washington State and has been observed stalking an unknown prey in the Medford area of Oregon. Prey selection depends on location and habitat, schedule, and abundance. Like most cats, the HarbourCat is territorial and will do everything it can to defend its home turf, particularly in the southern portion of Vancouver Island where it is concentrated in the summer months. It uses several methods to mark its territorial boundaries, including spitting out the hulls of sunflower seeds and marking the ground with their metal-like claws. Although many members of the cat family have been hunted extensively, both for sport and fur, the HarbourCat is actually deeply revered, with many humans often dressing as a HarbourCat and congregating en masse in some sort of religious ritual to catch a glimpse of the rare cat in its summer territory.