The bloody BYU Cougar

My sister just emailed our family a horrible (yet true) tale of a Cougar. No, no. No football player scandals or anything. A real cougar. At my sister's in-laws' house in the UT mountains.

For the long version and more pictures, visit Hollywood Flakes.

The short version is this:

Her father-in-law discovered a cougar making a terrible racket in his garage. He called his sons who lived nearby for back up. They ran the cougar off, unaware if it was legal to kill it. Unfortunately, they later found some of their most beloved animals dead at the cougar's doing. (My niece's favorite cat, Crookshanks and their beloved family horse of 23 years, Fancy...A horse I've ridden a time or two.) The next day they found fresh tracks again and called their cougar hunting neighbor to come help track the cougar down since it had obviously lost its fear of humans and was very dangerous to those who lived in their neighborhood. How dangerous?

Think SF Zoo people. Possible death!

Their son Troy (who is my age) went with the hunter to find the cougar. It had ravaged a deer. The hunter sent his two $8000 dogs up a very steep hill to track it. Find him they did. And they had their revenge.

Though Hollywood posted this next bit on her blog, I wanted to share it too since Chelsea is also my niece...It is her dad's account of Chelsea's reaction to her cat being killed. Keep in mind that she waited through 3 rounds of kittens to finally get her beloved orange cat so she could name it Crookshanks after Hermione's cat in Harry Potter.

It was one of those tragic moments when we discovered poor Crookie. He was born 3 years ago on Chelsea's birthday, and has been her best kitty ever since. Those of you who were here for Christmas probably remember her heartfelt song "crookie the orange kitty" sung to the tune of Rudolph.

On the way home Chelsea paraphrased her Warriors books (books about tribes of cats living in the forest) to come up with an epitaph. It was something along the lines of "crookshanks lived a more interesting life and died a more heroic death than most cats. Some cats get old and sick, others get run over, but Crookshanks died with fangs bared and claws unsheathed, (maybe protecting the other cats we think?) He now joins Starclan in the great Silver Pelt (the milky way)."

Chelsea wants to make sure crookie is buried in Katalia, which is her imaginary land up by the water tank. I don't know how I am going to dig in the frozen dirt, but I'll have to try. She thinks that now maybe Vladekia and Blue Star (the other two cats) might get along better, because she thinks they were both rivals for Crookshank's attentions. (but we fear they might be dead somewhere...we didn't see them tonight).

A few weeks ago for Speech class, Chelsea had to make a Worry Chart listing the top ten things she worried about. She listed "my cat getting killed or injured"......and that was the only thing she could think of to be worried about. The rest of the chart was left blank.

So sad...so sad.