Canton Area Cat Captured…With Camera
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 20th, 2011
Further encounters with what some are saying is the Ohio mystery cat has produced new photos.
On July 19, 2011, the Canton Repository posted the above photo of a big cat that a resident caught on film. This was reportedly seen in the Washington Township, Ohio, area.
Writes Cryptomundian Winkid from Ohio: “Though the picutre is not the best you can clearly see it is much larger than a house cat! I have personally (and some of my family ) seen a big cat in Baird just outside of Minerva, Ohio and know of others who have been reporting them for years. Yet officials have continued to deny their existance. We tried to get pictures of a cat in the field one night but all we had were cell phone cameras that showed nothing but darkness. With the right equipment it would be easy to photo one of these cats over there, or even capture one.”
Other “mystery cat” photos have also been taken in the area.
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.
looks just like a big orange housecat (Possibly American Shorthair) or a wild feline with a similar appearance (I tend to the former). The people who took the photo need to take another one with a person standing where the cat in question was to get a better idea as to how big the cat was. Judging by the size of it fro the available photos, i’d guess it would be a domestic cat that had only recently got out of its house (domestic cats are generally fed better than strays, and thus are larger due to better nutrition starting at the kitten stage. I’ve seen domestic cats 13 inches high and over 20 lbs).
I can’t see anything to scale it by. Looks like a house cat.
Isn’t there a dark grey cat in the first top box to the right of the post looking at the camera as big as the white and tan cat that is the central image?
Wow moving from blobsquatch to blobcat (get it, I know, I suck at being funny).
Anyway looks like a house cat to me. Top picture looks like it has 2 critters in it, one just to the right of the post and then the one at the far right of the photo.
“Though the picture is not the best you can clearly see it is much larger than a house cat!…”
Personally, I do not detect any basis for that assertion, as it’s hard to determine the size of the foliage with which to compare it and the fencing is not at the same distance – looks like a standard-sized pussy-cat to me.
Really? Now, I understand i wasn’t there and that there isn’t much in the photo to give an indication of the cat’s size…but I can’t see one thing about this photo that makes me think this isn’t an orange and white house cat. If you look in the first photo you can even see what appears to be a siamese cat just to left of the post…coincidently in picture #3, when the “siamese cat” disappears, you notice the other cat appears to even follow it into the brush. I’m not saying there isn’t the possibility of cougars in ohio, I’d even bet there are, but this is not one of them.
Look at pic 2 its part of the tree (the grey cat image). As far as I can tell that just looks like a house cat.
house cats..
I suspect if a domestic shorthair cat was photographed in the same spot, it may look slightly smaller, but this cat gives the impression of being within normal cat body size range (I have seen large-bodied but not obese pet cats as big as 15-20 pounds).
Also, its posture reminds me of a pet. Has anyone seen a cougar in a zoo or in the wild sitting in this position? It looks like a relaxed cat who may be in the process of cleaning itself.
Greetings All!
Other than Morris there, I think the Siamese or dark “cat” near the post in the top picture is just the trunk of the tree seen above it. That’s the trunk spreading out at the ground.
Looks like a house cat to me.
I’m sure this is a named animal (like “Fluffy”) and is well-loved by a near-by family. If not, I hope it is spayed/neutered and otherwise left alone.
They just look to me like normal cats. In fact, there seems to be a grey cat, rock or piece of wood in the top left of the picture.
Me.
OW.
I just figured it out guys. No more speculation.
…It’s Garfield!!!!
Before my interest in Bigfoot waxed, I studied the black cat phenomena of Australia extensively. The expert in that field, Mike Williams, also wrote a book about it, Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers,… it was much anticipated as it had been a number of years in the making, after careful and prolonged research. From my familiarity with him, I think he suspects them as being Felis Catus in spite of what the title suggests – but wanted to reach a mainstream audience and not have them think he was a kook. Judging a book by its cover can help get an author past that. I do think there is something going down there.
Unlikely as it may seem, feral cats after centuries of living off an unnatural land that is the island of Australia, where there is an abundance of prey and no natural predators remain, has caused in that population of domestic cat ancestry, giganticism. It’s convergent evolution brought on by the conditions in that environment. Australia also had the most renowned example of convergent evolution in the now extinct Marsupial predator Thylacine, the last in a long line of similar beasts.
Among felines this is not entirely unprecedented. Mountain Lions are more closely related to domestic cats than to lions or leopards; they are to an evolutionary extent, gigantic house cats. If you see one in a picture sitting at some distance w/out an obstacle to put it in perspective, morphologically it’s our pet cat species they bear a resemblance to. Mountain Lions and Jaguarundis also share a common ancestor and yet the otter-like Jaguarundi is comparatively tiny.
As far as this article goes, I’m not much taken by the prospect of cat growth mutation outside Australia, especially the Americas. The genetic range for size variation is too limited. I agree with what one wrote above, that the first picture looks like Morris. The 2nd picture though to me does show Bobcat characteristics. There are several reasons why one region, like Ohio, would have Bobcat/housecat hybridization. It does happen in rural areas. Probably not much, Bobcats are more prone to kill and eat pet cats or feral cats than to mate with them. But Bobcats can grow 4 times the size of housecats. If you saw what appeared to be a wild, house cat approaching 40 pounds by the woods, the discrepancy would be more marked. Also I hate to say this but our American populace is more stupid than other places. We routinely confuse housecats with Bobcats, Bobcats with Mountain Lions, and even housecats with Mountain Lions. It’s tempting to not believe me, but I’ve paid attention to the reports. 🙁
One more thing: On the off-chance that someone has a cat from the Genus Leopardus, an exotic pet, even though these are smaller species from South America, if one mates with a domestic cat, such as the small housecat sized Geoffrey’s cat, the offspring can be much, much larger than either parent, due to the chromosome difference of domestic cat having 38 and its wild counterpart having 36. Such is the case with the hybrid “Safari cat”.
It’s a large orange housecat, so…
Where’s Odie?
Hey Nominay! That “Safari cat” has a beautiful paint job!
There must have been something special about the cat in the article photos, but I agree with Hapa. There needs to be a new photo taken from the same spot with something for scale. It may very well be an Enormous Pussy-catus!
People are always seeing big mountain lions in Pennsylvania where I live a couple I know swear it but they don’t exist here. Nobody can explain it and government agencies just make excuses when asked.
It’s a house cat. I knew one that was almost three feet long, nose to tail-tip. Semi-longhair, red and cream. Also, it’s always in the same area. Wildcats would have huge range. I’m guessing it has human companions, just because it would be rare for ferals to get this big. Just wondering, has anyone seen the other photos before now? They look suspiciously like the same camera.