Mountain Lions on the Loose

A case of mistaken 'felinity'

House cat mistaken for cougar leads to police chase

Inside every pampered, furniture-shredding house cat beats the heart of a fearsome full-sized predator whose lightning speed, long teeth and sharp claws make deer and humans quake with fear.

That fantasy became a reality for one Boulder house cat Friday morning as police — who were under the impression they were after an animal that posed a threat to more than just the carpet — spent an hour trying to chase it out of central Boulder. Boulder police and Colorado Division of Wildlife officers were dispatched to Lover's Hill Park at 23rd and Bluff streets to chase a mountain lion out of the area. A witness told police the lion was seen a little before 8 a.m., according to officials.

But the mountain lion — which the witness told police probably weighed 85 pounds — turned out to be a house cat. Initially, Boulder police spokeswoman Julie Brooks said police responded to the scene and hazed the mountain lion away."They pushed it back west," she said. But Jennifer Churchill, a wildlife division spokeswoman, said one of her agency's officers responded to the scene and interviewed the witness. It turned out, she said, that the offending animal wasn't actually a mountain lion. "She pointed to it, and our officer said, 'No, ma'am, that's a house cat,'" she said. "That does happen sometimes."

To which Brooks, the police department spokeswoman, responded: "I don't think we would chase around a house cat for an hour." Actually, they were. Brooks later called to say officers never spotted the mountain lion they thought they were chasing. "We never actually saw the animal," she said. "We were chasing barking dogs, looking for this animal in this area, but our officers never actually saw it."

The report came a day after wildlife officers shot and killed a cougar in a northwest Boulder neighborhood. Officers from the Division of Wildlife shot the mountain lion in the backyard of a home on Linden Park Drive on Thursday. The cougar didn't show any fear of humans, which wildlife officials regard as a dangerous sign.


We think it was Mille, but its hard to be sure. You can see how there might be confusion: