Scenerio: You are watching TV in your living room. Your cat walks by the sliding door and all of a sudden puffs up…and does the double hop backwards whilst hissing furiously.
You stand up and look out the back sliding door and see this looking up at you from the lawn just past the porch…
Then he come up on the porch :eek: and looks like this then this.
Ok after soiling yourself what do you do? Obviously the chap who took these photos grabbed his camera. I think I might have done the same. 
I’d think it was pretty neat to see one up close, grab my camera to snap some pictures, and make sure all the house pets were inside.
It’s cute, until the third picture…
I would probably just not move and hope it went away I guess. Don’t wanna be eaten.
wow! where do you live, phlosphr??
I’m in a rural area and we’ve had foxes and deer and such, but never something like that!
ETA: apparently it wasn’t you… :o
You won’t believe me if I told you where I live and where this photo came from.
Connecticut.
Awwwwwwwwww. Even in the third picture, awwwwwwwww. In answer to your question – do not leave scraps out for him, or otherwise encourage him to come up on the deck. But he is beautiful, lucky you! We have a few foxes now and then, and at least one good-looking coyote, but no cougars, mountain lions or the like.
Well, I can pretty much guarantee that momentarily I would be looking for the upholstery cleaner.
Man - you with your minks and this guy with his cougars. To think I got excited over seeing a coupla deer (re: forest preserve rats) from the train last week.
Actually - from your title, I expected something slightly different - and was gonna suggest something like considering giving up drinking to excess when going to a certain category of bar… 
Well the cat could be a female I suppose 
How great is it that someone finally remembers to put the kitteh pics right in the OP?
Well there may be cougars in Ct, but that one was from idaho or some place. Check it out on snopes.
THANK YOU!!! I have been wondering where I saw that picture before! It was a few months ago and I thought I had seen it before.
BTW - The guy who sent me the pic said it was from Simsbury, CT. :dubious: I sent him the snoppes link
I believe the answer to the question in the thread title is here.
Meh, that’s nuffink.
I had a wild mole dig up my garden last week…bugger musta been all of 2" long
A cougar in the kitchen, dunno. But if called by a panther, according to Ogden Nash…
Don’t anther.
In pictures I find it cute and rather cool, but I have to admit, if one actually showed up on my front porch, it would probably trigger flashbacks to bad dreams I’ve had in the past that involve large predators invading the house in order to kill me, and I would be compelled to run and hide. Armed with a baseball bat and a cell phone.
Was it this guy?
Mole, black and grim, brandishing his stick and shouting his awful war-cry, ‘A Mole! A Mole!’
I think I might let my housecat into the house immediately so it didn’t become a meal for this cougar.
Beautiful to see, but I’d have a hard time being comfortable to let my kitty out again.
I’m always amused at how much “large cats” look just like the little hunter I have sleeping on the bed at night. I know cougars aren’t technically Great Cats but the same holds true for lions, leopards, tigers, etc.
In rural Colorado we usually keep firearms in our homes just for occasions like this. Of course, he’d have to come through the patio door before I’d shoot, but if he ever got in the house – well, we have a law.
It’s easy for me to talk big, though – the closest mountain lion to my place is Boulder County 200 miles away.
Ditto. When I was a kid, I used to have a reoccurring nightmare about a cougar coming into the house, or trying to, and the front door was open and so was the back door… (I grew up in small town BC and a bit in the NWT, so encounters with critters weren’t unknowns.) For some reason, cougars scare the spit out of me, even though I’ve never seen one in the wild or in the not-so-wild. Now, I live smack up against a regional park where the deer and possibly the cougars, can roam, and there are occasional sightings in the area. Plus, our 7 pound dog is delicious, tasty cougar bait.
If I looked up and saw that creature against the sliding glass doors, the dog would have to fend for herself, alas, because I’d probably be dead of heart failure. I don’t have a baseball bat.
Beautiful animals, aren’t they? I mean, I can admire them, but I don’t want to encounter one. At least with bears (not-grizzly-kind) I’d feel confident in my ability to shout, make noise, act big and scary. But a cougar? I have no confidence.
::re-thinks this afternoon’s walk in the park::
