State wildlife officials are investigating a southern Indiana family’s report that a mountain lion killed their pet cat.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources says it received a report March 11 that an animal, possibly a mountain lion, attacked and killed a domestic cat in Brown County.
DNR staffers collected the pet’s carcass and are examining it. The agency says a search of the reported attack site found no tracks associated with a mountain lion.
James Halcomb of Nashville reported that the predator wasn’t a bobcat but an “extremely fast, large brown cat, long tail” that was the size of a deer.
The DNR says mountain lions vanished in Indiana by the late 1800s, but there have been confirmed sightings, one in 2009 in Clay County and another 2010 in Greene County.