Anyone know much about large cats?
If you lived near or travelled near the area where Beltway 8 crosses Wallisville in Houston last summer you would have noticed an abundance of large black creatures mangled and dead on the side of the road for a few weeks. I had seen them too but hadn't paid much attention. The road is extremely dark at night and dogs are killed all the time there. One day on the way to college, one of these things bounded out in front of me. It was about the size of a large dog or a small deer. The coat was black and flecked with gold. It's legs were like those of a deer but the body and head were those of a cat. The head and legs grabbed my attention. The head was boxy and it had a short snout, much like a large cat. The tail looked similar to a deer's but was a little longer. It crossed the large 4 laned road and wide shoulders in two strides. It moved extremely gracefully.
I stopped in at the library a short time after. Another was mangled at the side of the road. I didn't notice the same gold coloring on it, but it's face was unmistakeably feline. Everyone told me I had just seen a dog. I didn't think much of it until a friend who had come to visit from North Carolina said we had some very strange creatures here and described what I had seen. A few months later, a girl I had met in class said that one kept coming near her barn and bothering her horses. I've lived here for 15 years and I've never seen anything like them before or since. Thinking on it, several things have occurred to me. When the creatures first started showing up, a company was tearing down trees in the forest in that area. When they stopped construction, the things weren't spotted again. Years ago, my brother and I came on a site where there were many remains of cats and medium sized dogs. There aren't supposed to be any (large) carnivores native to this area, unless you count the omnivorous raccoons. Perhaps the construction flushed them out of hiding?
Has anyone heard of creatures like these before?
UK Big Cat Mailing List - posted 15th December 2001 - original source unknown