Twisted Tales of Mystery Cat Photo
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 3rd, 2007
Here, below, is the one photograph that has been released, thusfar, of the Maine Mystery Cat, taken from a homeowner’s backyard in Sidney, Maine.
The photo is from a digital camera, and the pixels give this felid a less than sharp configuration. But as you can see from reading the past blogs on this matter, the downloading of the camera, from the testimony of the photo lab owner, speaks well for this image to have not been Photoshopped.
But that has not stopped others from using various techniques to manipulate this image.
While no one seems to have seen a tail on this photographed cat, yet, that doesn’t mean others haven’t tried to make their own tale of this picture.
In terms of the created fakes, first there is this one, being passed around the internet, of a tiger put in place of the Mystery Cat in the original image. Additionally, so the weak debunking goes, this pic is being presented as the “source” of the original. In other words, whether for sinister or humorous reasons, someone created a hoax in an attempt to undermine the first Sidney Mystery Cat image by saying the tiger was there first. Sorry, but the Photoshop fogginess is clearly visible around the superimposed tiger.
Next is a fake produced to try to make an analytic point.
Terry Shumaker sent this one to me, with this note: “Just for your enjoyment, I Photoshopped a photo of a mountain lion I took in Arizona into the Maine original. To the left of the Maine cat I tried to reduce and degrade the image to match the original as closely as possible. The image to the right is the same photo, just reduced to scale. Please judge for yourself. For the record, I think the Maine photo is genuine. But my part of it is fake. Fake, fake, fake! The animal I photographed is not in the Maine woods; it is in captivity in Arizona.
I may have more factual info soon. In the meantime, I thought you would enjoy the above for more compare and contrast comments.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I enjoyed this one immensely since it is about photography! Nice job Loren! And Happy Fourth of July everyone.
This is really messing with my head.
I can’t judge whether the “Mystery Cat” has been photoshopped in or not, but the “original” has the heavy build of a jaguar.
Very enjoyable! I’ve worked in a digital photo lab going on four years and have been a photographer for about three decades so this was a lot of fun looking at the comparison.
I took the images and examined them as carefully as I could here at home and I agree. Every indication is that the mystery cat is real and not photoshopped!
If it’s a fake, it’s a darn good one by someone who really knows their stuff, but for my money this is real.
Happy July 4th Everyone!
The 3rd picture is helpful because it permits a fair cryptid-cougar comparison. Because of it we can dismiss the cougar theory because its eyes are too close together compared to a cougar’s. Of all the known felids the one it reminds the most is a jaguar. Perhaps jaguar distribution extended all along the east coast and this is the relic of the north extremity.
kinda resembes a Snow Leopard.. ?
Wow! That 3rd picture is amazing! Mystery felines galore! I must go there now!
This is starting to remind of one those Photoshop contest sites where people manipulate the images in whatever way they can imagine. It’s getting so easy nowadays my mom can fake a photo and she can hardly update an Excel spreadsheet. I am totally ‘no-kill’ when it comes to mystery animals but there is almost no option anymore BUT to somehow provide a carcass to prove anything. What kind of a world do we live in where we need to kill something in order to ‘save’ it?
oh yeah…
Happy 4th Everyone!
Lions I have seen…and cougars too! just not in the wild…or anything…
Having looked at the photo many times, based on my personal sightings of big cats in Maine, I would say that this was a lynx or bob cat…..
I am not well versed in all of this photoshop trickery, but the mystery photo looks legitimate to me.
Forgot to mention in my previous post of former Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife official Paul Reynolds claim of a verified cougar incident in Cape Elizabeth in March 1996. A woman reported seeing a mountain lion. When game wardens combed the area, they found fur stuck 12 feet up in a large tree.
A laboratory performed DNA tests on the fur, which was confirmed to be from a mountain lion. The preceeding is just another example of Mark Latti comments being full of holes.
Paul Reynolds went on to say, “based on everything I’ve seen, there is NO doubt that cougars are widespread in MAINE”.
Now what was the comment made by the current mouthpiece of Maine’s Dept. of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife?
If wildlife officials want to comment on other Maine cougars over the last 75 years, we have the data to make them eat their words.
Thanks for the Pic’s Loren. I do think the first one is the real deal. Just not sure what it is.
Hehe the photoshopped tiger picture actually looks more real than the ‘mystery cat’ original 🙂
Hopefully after seeing that 3rd pic with the cougars pasted in, people will stop saying that the cat looks like a cougar/puma/mountain lion b/c it obviously looks nothing like one- especially when having 2 standing there next to it to show how different they look.
I agree that the ‘mystery cat’ looks kinda lynxish. Bobcats are very small (not much bigger than my housecats) so I would toss that theory away.
Though, IMHO, the mystery cat photo looks extremely fake. And I am personally surprised that so many people think it looks authentic. I havce seen much better looking shots of cryptids get the “OMG its fake” explosion from everyone. So it’s odd that such an unclear, pixely, pasted-looking picture is getting so much attention as looking real :-/
Maybe it is real, who knows. But IMO it is one of the fakes.
Were any other photos of this cat taken? Perhaps it they took multiple photos of it, it’d be easier to tell. Maybe one of it turning its head or walking away, etc.
Heh…as the perpetrator of the third photo, I drew a different conclusion than CrimsonFox. As I degraded the image to try to match the Maine photo, my cat became shaggier, and even spotted. Mine was shot in shade, so colors are not as obvious. I remember it to be slightly redder. The Maine cat appears to be in sunlight. My cat was alert…almost posing. The Maine cat seems to be caught in an awkward position…taking an over-the-shoulder look before running off.
All that aside, the features of the Maine cat have little resemblance to a lynx. The ears aren’t lynx-like. Also notice the white Moustache on both the Maine cat and my photo. The lynx generally has a long, white muttonchopped beard under its chin, which the Maine cat doesn’t.
Sorry. It all still boils down to people seeing what they want to see…including me. Life is a giant Rorschach test. I’ve had experience observing mountain lions in the wild. That doesn’t mean I can’t be wrong. I feel that the photo and the cat are genuine. Imagine my embarrassment if they’re not.
I’m not really sure what this mystery could be, real or fake, it’s some kind of cat.
Do people actually expect people to believe that? 😛