With so much perennial talk of cougar sightings in the area, needless to say we were surprised this week when Steve Brown paid us a visit to show us the above picture, taken by his niece, Molly Jayne, on Monday afternoon near the intersection of County Road 9 and Riverside Drive.
Sure enough, the photograph clearly shows a spotted cat running along the edge of the bush. Could it be true? Is it not a cougar but a leopard that’s been lurking around the Mad River valley all these years?
Luckily, the Echo has its own naturalist in the office – namely Gary Page of Page Graphics – who took a look at the photograph and immediately wondered if the animal was a Savannah cat, which is a domestic cross between a Siamese cat and a Serval, a small, wild cat found in southern Africa.
In our opinion, the photographs below which we pulled off the Internet – the first, a Savannah cat and the second, a leopard – confirm Gary’s suspicion. The size and build of the cat and its striped tail seem to give it away.
But we’d love to confirm our theory. Would the owner of the animal care to get in touch? It might put our readers’ minds at ease…
Above: A Savannah cat, a domestic cross between a Siamese cat and an African Serval.
Above: An African leopard relaxes in a tree.
