Cougar kills family cat, returns 9 hours later in haunting visit
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included a graphic video. It has been removed.
A mountain lion killed a family cat, peered through a glass door in the back of the house and then, in a haunting visit, returned nine hours later when it banged its head against the same glass door.
The frightening encounter occurred last month outside Calgary, Alberta, around noon just after Jessica Low had made lunch for her 5-year-old daughter, as reported by OkotoksOnline. The girl had spotted something in the backyard.
“Within about a minute of sitting her down, she cried out to me that, ‘[Oreo] is dead,’” Low told OkotoksOnline. “I shot up off the couch to see what she was talking about and there was a cougar coming right up to the window with our dead cat in its mouth.”
The cougar pawed at the window and hissed, perhaps eyeing the girl as prey.
Low captured video of the scary ordeal and it was posted on the natureismetal Instagram account.
A call to the Alberta Fish and Wildlife Enforcement prompted officers to go to the house and look around, but they were unable to locate the mountain lion. They did remove Oreo’s body, hoping it would deter the cougar from returning.
But it did return around 9 p.m., and this time Low’s older daughter was the first to see it.
“It came back to the window and was banging its head up against the glass and kind of stared at me while I came towards it, and as I got closer it turned around and ran off,” Low told OkotoksOnline. “Fish and Wildlife said that they think it was kind of testing the glass, which is why it was bumping its head against the glass, which is pretty scary.”
Fish and Wildlife personnel returned to the house but again failed to locate the animal. They returned the next day and set traps in hopes of capturing the cougar. It is not known if they eventually caught the mountain lion.
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But less than two weeks later, 10 miles from the attack outside Low’s home, a Foothills resident came face-to-face with a cougar, which attacked his dog. Jakob Strasser returned home and heard a commotion at this front gate just before 8 p.m., according to the Calgary Herald.
“I ran up to it, had nothing in my hands, and I just screamed at the cougar,” he told the Herald.
The cougar dropped the small dog, which sustained injuries but survived. It remains unknown whether it was the same attacking cougar.
“We are next to the Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation Area, so we know that they [predators] are potentially around here, but we’ve been out here for about two and a half years, we have a camera on our door, and we’ve never seen anything at night, let alone during the day,” Low told OkotoksOnline.
“I would just not in a million years think that a cougar would come out in the middle of the day.”
She told the Herald, “Cougars around here are just getting bolder.”