iStockphoto / gatito33
A family in Washington enjoying some leisure time in their backyard was just as stunned as the mountain lion feverishly chasing their pet house cat when they call came face-to-face after the cat launched itself into the safety of the home and the cougar stood like a statue realizing it was within feet of the family.
This all went down in Monroe, Washington which is northeast of Seattle but firmly up in the woods to the point that mountain lion (or cougars) sightings aren’t unheard of but even still, nobody involved in this high-speed cat chase expected to come so close to one another.
From the clip, it appears as if the family’s daughter was the first one to recognize what was going on. The large cougar came within just two feet of the mother, April, who were sitting outside with a new puppy. Mom sent her daughter running into the house as she scooped up the puppy and followed her all while the mountain lion took off chasing the cat.
Maybe it’s the fact that I live in Southwest Florida and our native cougar subspecies, the Florida Panther, is so rare that I’ve never come face to face with one in the wild in all my years in Florida, but I simply cannot fathom kicking it on your back porch with your kid and a new puppy when a fully jacked adult mountain lion comes sprinting up within two feet of you. But those in the PNW might feel similarly about alligators as I do about mountain lions, I suppose.
According to the dad, Greg Havener, their two cats made it away safely from the attacking mountain lion. Being smaller and more agile seems to have come in handy as the cougar wasn’t quite able to match their speed of switching directions.