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I live in Suffolk, Virginia, in a suburban area. We have a a mixture of average density housing with horse farms and large expanses of land, some wooded, and some open.
Every residence is on at least one acre of land. There's a large patch of woods (10-20 acres) about a 150 yards away in two different directions. There's at least 50 acres of woods about 1/4 mile away.
Look at the tail on this creature. And judging by the size, if this is a cat, it's a big 'un.
Walks like a domestic cat. But it must be fun to see what is out and about at night.
I use a trail camera to check out what visits at night. You can get a cheaper one for less than a hundred bucks. An advantage to this type camera is you can move it to a different spot every night.
For clarification, you could go put an object in the same place the cat walked through, so you have some scale on size.
My guess is, that's even a relatively small house cat.
Definitely house cat. Watch a video of a cougar. The pace, limb extension and reach, and tail length don't fit. Cougar body and neck length to limb ratio is longer. Tails are longer....more of it touches the ground.
Cougars are a lot slower and a lot more muscular. You got yourself a Ford Focus there, not a premium sports car. I used to live in Central Oregon and the mudpond behind the house had cougar paw prints in it one morning. Bigger across than my own hand splayed out. I never went out at night again...
It looks like a house cat. Cougars have proportionally longer tails and they have an upcurve to them. We have plenty of cougars around here and sometimes they will wander into residential areas or even business districts. The trails in the nearby hills always have many of their tracks, although they are experts at staying out of sight. Once in January, their breeding season, I had been sitting quietly for an hour after dark, on a log, up on a hillside. Off to the side, a female cougar began calling to her mate, mewing loudly, sounding just like a housecat will do, when in heat. I tried to approach to where I might have shined a powerful flashlight on her. But as quiet as I thought I was being, she heard me instantly and took off. I found her tracks in the moist ground, showing that she'd raced uphill, taking long, bounding strides.
Last edited by Steve McDonald; 08-03-2018 at 07:02 PM..
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