House cat moves out after hungry cougar moves in
Republic, Wash., used to be the kind of place where residents could leave their front doors open on hot summer nights.
Cleve Ives, the Ferry County juvenile services coordinator, won’t be doing that again. Not since the night three weeks ago when his tabby cat, Isabelle, jumped on his bed and woke him up around 2 a.m.
“I just kind of picked her up and said, ‘No, no,’ and tossed her down on the floor,” Ives recalled. “About five seconds later, I heard this crashing and banging in the living room.”
When he went to investigate, he saw “this big cat and this little cat racing around at Mach 5 and books falling off the wall.”
The big cat – a bobcat, maybe, Ives thought – was about three inches behind Isabelle, right on her tail.
“They were like one thing almost, just this blur,” Ives said. “My cat is sprinting for her life, and I’m kind of one room behind them. I’m turning on lights as they’re racing around the house.”
They went from the living room to the kitchen and on to the dining room, knocking down plants and glasses and scattering papers everywhere they went.
“Then they went racing into my bedroom,” Ives said. “I went in there and turned on the light and right on my bed, on a white bedspread, was this juvenile cougar.”
An avid hiker, Ives had never seen a cougar in the wild, much less in his bedroom. It was “gorgeous,” he said, a tawny, golden color with brown-tipped ears.
A conservationist, Ives has been reluctant to talk about what happened in the wee hours of June 23 for fear it will encourage efforts to reduce cougar populations through increased hunting.
Ives wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but he had another reason to keep the incident quiet: He’s not supposed to have a cat, big or small.
“My landlord, if she knew I had a cat, I’d be in trouble,” Ives said. “But, if she doesn’t know now, she’s probably the only one in town.”
Isabelle was living under the county jail three winters ago while still a kitten. County workers scratched her ears and fed her occasionally until Ives finally took her home.
Imagine what his landlady would say if she knew he had a cougar, too. Ives hoped simply to shoo the young mountain lion out of the house and close the door.
“I would have told my friends I saw a cougar, but I would have been a lot quieter about it,” Ives said. “I really don’t think they’re that big a problem. It’s all part of living in rural life.”
He’s not sure whether the cougar ran through his front door in hot pursuit of Isabelle or simply smelled a snack inside and snuck in. Either way, he blames himself for leaving the door ajar.
It’s not easy to apologize to a frightened cougar, though.
When Ives and the young female lion wound up eye to eye in his bedroom, he figured she was more afraid of him than he was of her. In fact, the cougar quickly leaped for the open bedroom window.
The window had a screen, however, and the lion bounced off.
“She leaps again, but she can’t get out and then she turns and snarls at me, and I’m probably four feet away,” Ives recalled.
He realized things could get ugly if he continued to confront the frustrated cat.
“Can you imagine that?” he said. “You leap into space and something invisible stops you.”
Ives said he retreated, opened the front door wide and sat quietly in a chair, waiting for his uninvited guest to make her way out.
A half-hour or so later, Ives was still waiting. He thought about going outside to remove the screen from his bedroom window, but he needed his shoes to negotiate a pile of debris outside the window.
“You’ll never guess where my shoes were,” Ives said. “Right underneath my bed.”
Reluctantly, he called 911 and Police Chief Nick Merritt arrived about five minutes later.
Merritt said he peaked into the bedroom and had some doubts about Ives’ story when he saw no cougar. Then he looked under the bed, “and there she is.”
Merritt summoned local businessman and hound hunter Richard Eich, who had a state Department of Fish and Wildlife permit to kill three cougars who had been prowling the city for the previous couple of weeks.
The three men plotted strategy while Eich’s three hounds waited outside.
They couldn’t shoot it because there were too many houses nearby. Besides, Ives didn’t want a dead cougar under his bed, Merritt said.
“There was a very brief discussion about bringing the dogs into the house, but that very quickly got squelched,” Ives said. “I think we all realized the absurdity of it. It would have been a great comic sight, but the house would have been rubble.”
Instead, Merritt and Eich removed the window screen. Then they entered the bedroom and pulled Ives’ mattress toward themselves.
“Suddenly, this head pops up and turns and sees the three of us and sees this open window, and she bolts out,” Ives said.
Eich and his three hounds bolted after her.
The cougar apparently was one of the three – a mother and two juveniles – that state officials had authorized Eich to kill. He soon dispatched it when his dogs treed it in open area at the edge of town, about a quarter-mile from Ives’ home.
Eich estimated the animal was about 1 1/2 years old and weighed about 50 pounds.
He and his hounds pursued the other two problem cougars for the fourth or fifth time on Wednesday this week, but they got away again. It’s hard to track cougars in town, and scent quickly dissipates in hot weather, Eich said.
“What has happened is that those cats have learned to hunt the house cats,” Eich said. “These cats have become used to people. They’ve been in town quite a while now.”
Eich “did what he had to do, and did it well,” Ives said, acknowledging that parents have legitimate concerns about cougars in town. Still, he regrets that the cougar that chased Isabelle was killed.
Isabelle is Ives’ other regret. She apparently cowered in the bedroom until the cougar was routed. When the lion jumped out the window, Isabelle scrambled through the door.
“She was terrified, I think,” Ives said.
He figures Isabelle also may have been disillusioned with him: “You’re supposed to protect me. What’s going on?”
In any event, Ives said, Isabelle never came back.