A Foothills mother is reeling after a cougar killed one of her family's cats right outside her home and returned hours later.
Jessica Low had just prepared lunch for her youngest daughter at around noon when the five-year-old spotted something in the backyard.
"Within about a minute of sitting her down, she cried out to me that, '[Oreo] is dead.' I shot up off the couch to see what she was talking about and there was a cougar coming right up to the window with our dead cat in its mouth."
The cougar was right up against the windowed back door of the home, peering inside.
After dropping the cat's lifeless body, the cougar proceeded to paw at the window and hissed at Low and her daughter.
"I was trying to block her from seeing it and trying to scare it away by banging on the door and it didn't seem very interested in leaving. It eventually picked up our cat again and walked over a few feet to our flower bed where it dropped it. It stayed around for another minute and then turned around and walked off towards the road."
Low contacted Alberta Fish and Wildlife Enforcement who sent officers to her house to take a look around. They weren't able to locate the cougar and removed Oreo's body in hopes it would deter the cougar from returning.
Low's older daughter was the one who first laid eyes on the cougar when it did return at about 9 p.m. that night.
"It came back to the window and was banging its head up against the glass and kind of stared at me while I came towards it, and as I got closer it turned around and ran off. Fish and Wildlife said that they think it was kind of testing the glass, which is why it was bumping its head against the glass, which is pretty scary."
Personnel from Alberta Fish and Wildlife returned and were again unable to locate the cougar.
Concerned by the behaviour exhibited by the animal, they came back on Wednesday to set traps in hopes of capturing it.
While Low has always been aware of the possibility that wild animals could make their way through the area, the shock of seeing a predator right outside her home clutching one of her cats in its jaws in broad daylight was not something she could have ever prepared for.
"We are next to the Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation Area, so we know that they are potentially around here, but we've been out here for about two and a half years, we have a camera on our door, and we've never seen anything at night, let alone during the day," says Low.
"Those windows are right off our kitchen, so I've often let my little five-year-old sit outside and play with the kitties while I make her lunch because it's right there next to our house, it's visible. I would just not in a million years think that a cougar would come out in the middle of the day."
The Lows' other cat, Rosie, hasn't been seen since the first encounter with the cougar.
For now, Jessica won't be letting her kids out of the house alone and will be waiting in the car with them for the school bus each morning.
