A juvenile fisher cat photographed Sunday in North Kingstown.

projo.com / Pamela Reinsel Cotter

A 6-year-old Hope Valley boy walking with his mother to the bus stop Monday morning was bitten by a fisher cat, Hopkinton police said Monday.

Officials at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management say that fisher cats, closely related to weasels and minks, prey on birds and small mammals and can be a threat to domestic cats.

Hopkinton police said a woman on Karen Drive was walking her children to the bus stop at 8:02 a.m. Monday when she saw an animal near the road. At first she thought it was a cat, but she decided it could be a fox and turned the children around. As they walked away, the animal attacked her son, she told the police. She tried several times to kick it off, and when she succeeded, the animal “took an aggressive demeanor and appeared to be getting ready for a second attack,” the police report said.

At that point, another child threw a backpack at the animal, which attacked the backpack. The distraction allowed the group to reach safety.

A neighbor kicked the animal and chased it across the street. Both adults described the animal as being 20 to 25 pounds, low to the ground, with a brown coat and long, bushy tail.

The police said the child was taken to Westerly Hospital with bite marks on his right leg. Hopkinton police and DEM personnel searched the woods where the animal disappeared but couldn’t find it.

Charlie Brown, a DEM Fish and Wildlife biologist, said fisher cat can often be seen in the daytime locally.

Pamela Reinsel Cotter, a producer for projo.com, photographed four fisher cats in her North Kingstown yard over the weekend.

dnaylor@projo.com