By Tim Binnall
A Hawaiian man could not believe his eyes when he spotted a mysterious and rather sizeable big cat prowling around his property over the weekend. According to a local media report, the unsettling sighting occurred on Sunday morning as the unnamed witness was weeding his yard in the fairly remote community of Holualoa. The normally routine task, however, took a frightening turn when he noticed that there was a rather large animal lurking approximately 400 feet away near a stone wall on his property. "I see this massive animal and at first I'm thinking that’s a big dog," the shaken witness recalled, "I’m like, oh my god, that is not a dog that is a cat. That is a huge cat."
Smartly choosing to keep his distance from the creature, the man managed to snap a photograph of the peculiar feline, though admitted that he was so unnerved by the animal that he was shaking as he attempted to snap the picture. In an effort to ensure that the beast did not come any closer, the witness subsequently fired a rifle in the direction of the feline, which caused it to flee the scene in a manner which left the witness astounded. "As soon as it jumped, I mean this thing maybe five, six feet up in the air, as well as out almost 30 feet," he recalled, "I've never seen anything like that. I mean, cats can jump but I've never seen a big cat jump."
Once it was apparent that the creature wasn't coming back, the man ventured to where it had been and, to his credit, took photos of the prints that the animal left behind and sent them off to the state's Department of Land and Natural Resources, which subsequently launched an investigation into the curious big cat sighting. They hope to be able to spot the feline again using game cameras and, if possible, eventually capture it. As for what kind of cat it could have been, an expert from the Honolulu Zoo conceded that the pictures are difficult to decipher, but observed that the paw prints suggest that it was possibly a Southwestern Lynx, which is a decidedly non-native species in Hawaii and likely had escaped from a private collector who was illegally keeping it in captivity.