UK SIGHTING: Mystery cats: Still elusive after all these years

OAK HARBOR -- On a quiet morning this past May, a resident of a retirement center in Oak Harbor says she was looking out her window and saw it move. A cat. Not just any cat, but a very big cat that looked like a mountain lion or a cougar. Tan in color and moving fast across the fields. She wasn't the only one to see it, other residents and workers also saw the feline before it vanished.  The sighting was reported to police and soon thereafter, as a safety precaution, recess was cancelled at a nearby grade school. Traps were set by wildlife officials in hopes that they might catch it.

That was 4 months ago, but no tracks were ever found and no other traces of the big cat were ever discerned. That's how these "cat sightings" are. Fleeting.  It was the same story in Ottawa County, in the summer of 1990, where residents of the small village of Genoa were also shaken by reports of a big "black cat" that was seen "loping" across SR 163 just inside the village limits. A subsequent search turned up little.
Mike Mullins, a private investigator, who was the police chief of nearby Clay Center at the time, says the report was very credible, coming from two of the village employees. They were adamant that it was some kind of large black leopard, and not a fat house cat. But a thorough search and investigation turned up no evidence that a large exotic feline  had come to visit to the area. These types of reports are not isolated. The number of "big cat sightings, around the nation and around the world, are common.

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