Meet Chips, the bobcat kitten deemed "too nice" to return to the wilderness after being rescued from a 75,000-acre fire northwest of Lake Tahoe back in August. Chips was a mere three or four weeks old when fire crews found her stumbling out of the smoldering brush looking disoriented, but she apparently took a liking to her rescuers, following and snuggling up to one firefighter in particular.

Firefighter Charles "Tad" Hair with the Mad River Ranger District noticed her paws had been burned and picked her up to flush the soot from her eyes. After Tad's fire crew searched the area for the missing mother, they realized poor Chips would be on her own from here on out. From there she was taken to Sierra Wildlife Center in Placerville to lick her wounds.

Besides being way too adorable to live and forcing us to resist the urge to steal her and lie to our landlord about having a cat in the apartment, Chips is apparently too friendly to survive alone in the Northern California wilderness. Now she's getting some lessons in toughness from some rough-and-tumble fellow rescue bobcats, including one who has already survived a run-in with a car and another who was ditched by his mother behind a local army depot. (You really can't make this stuff up.) The Sacramento Bee explains:

[Chips] was introduced to Tuffy, a snarly bobcat who got his fractured elbow repaired by a local vet after getting hit by a car in El Dorado County, and to Sierra, who was left by his mother near the Sierra Army Depot, southeast of Susanville, and wasn't about to warm to any human.

So now there's no more cuddling for Chips, no more soft bed. She's having to chase down her own live mice, and occasionally a rabbit, with Tuffy and Sierra. Only on special days does she get some ready-made roadkill squirrel.

Chips, Tuffy and Sierra are all expected to be released back into the wild sometime next spring. After that, we can only imagine the three of them will all be best friends and even find feline love.

If you love bobcats as much as we suddenly do, you can find more ways to help the Sierra Wildlife Rescue on their website here.