Someone mailed me the photo - was said to have been either Montana or Idaho.

I expect the flash and subsequent blindness would have freaked the cat - gone.

Around here, their numbers are slowly raising - the whitetail population is exploading, so we can expect cat numbers to increase as well as the damn wolves.

Friends of mine had a mountain lion 'casing' their dogs (dogs were on the veranda) one Christmas day couple years back. One of the dogs was a Great Perenese/St. Bernard cross - maybe 250 pounds - the cat just sat there about 100yards away, watching them. Harold wasn't home and his wife who saw it all, doesn't shoot - too bad. She brought the dogs inside and the cat left. They haven't seen the cat since.