Published: March 01, 2009 10:37 pm         

Cougar sightings have locals talking, questioning stray cat

TERRE HAUTE — In the cafes, coffee shops, in bars and bowling alleys, everyone these days, it seems, is talking about the stray cat that no one wants to feed.

A cougar is roaming Terre Haute’s east side, according to recent reports to police. The latest sighting, the third in two days, put the big cat in Dobbs Park last Tuesday.

“We were at a Health Fair [Saturday] and I think 99 percent of the people who came up said something about it,” said Carissa Lovett, the naturalist for the park.

Tuesday’s sighting prompted park employees to put up eight signs at various places around the park, informing park visitors about the sighting and to “… walk at your own risk.”

Lovett is quick to point out that park employees can’t confirm a cougar is lurking. They did not talk to the latest witness and only know that a “credible source” reported seeing the feline in Dobbs.

However, she says, “For a year and a half, I’ve gotten calls from people sighting a cougar along Fruitridge [Avenue] from Margaret [Avenue] to Hulman [Street].”

Todd Brinza, who lives near Fruitridge and Hulman, said he saw a cougar a few days before the first of the latest three sightings. He did not report it to police.

The longtime insurance agent said he saw a large animal illuminated in his headlights near Hulman Street and Rice Avenue, sauntering across the road.

“There was no question in my mind what it was,” Brinza said.

The recent sightings have their skeptics, foremost of whom is no less an expert than Joe Taft.

Taft is owner of the Exotic Feline Rescue Center near Center Point, from where a 7-year old cougar named Donner escaped two years ago and has never been found.

The Rescue Center currently is home to 189 big cats, including 17 cougars. Taft knows cats like Dole knows pineapples.

“I cannot conceive that people are seeing a cougar, and the odds of it being Donner are zero,” Taft said Friday. He believes Donner is dead, having received disturbing information that someone shot her soon after she escaped. He would not elaborate about that information.

As for what’s being seen in Terre Haute being a cougar, he says, “There’s been a total lack of empirical evidence. No verifiable tracks, no scat, no marks of any kind.”

People misconceive the size of an adult cougar, he said. This is not the tabby you tossed into the barn to catch mice.

“They are long and thick,” Taft said of the adult cougar, often stretching 8 feet and weighing 80 pounds or more. Cats such as these who eat deer would gobble mice like French fries.

Taft suggested the witnesses saw a dog or deer, or bobcat — a much smaller cat than a cougar.

“There has been supposed sightings around that neighborhood for years which leads me to believe there’s something there besides the cougar that looks like it,” Taft said. “People getting quick glances in brush can think they see things that they don’t.”

Brinza, however, said his unobstructed view caught the profile of the cat near the middle of Hulman Street.

“When you watch an animal walk, there’s a huge difference between a cat and a dog or coyote,” Brinza said, remembering the straight back of the cougar he saw.

Cougar attacks on humans are rare, Taft said, because the animal is scared of people.

Still, all the cat-talk has some eastside residents wary of the big one who just might be sitting behind their back-yard oak. At the very least, east-side residents are watching their pets.

From inside his house last May, Jim Gray heard a big animal jump onto his outside deck and land with a resounding “thud.” His pet cat, left outside, let out what Gray called “a blood-curdling scream.” The next morning, he found the cat dead.

“Some kind of animal got that cat and whatever it was, it was a big boy or girl,” Gray said.

Now the Grays, who live near the Fruitridge cat corridor that Lovett spoke of, are watching their dog closer these days.

In Dobbs Park on Sunday, a breeze shook the bare branches of trees, casting shadows that danced on a paved road that winds through he park. No trail walkers could be seen, although that is not unusual on a day when temperatures are in the 30s.

Meanwhile, the loose cougar, if there is one, scratched out another day in the Wabash Valley, happily secluded.

“I guess if we got one around, he will show up sooner or later,” Gray said. “I just hope someone doesn’t get hurt.”

John D. Wright can be reached at (812) 231-4255 or john.wright@tribstar.com.