Rt. 66’s Kitty Cat, Not Panther

If you ever
Plan to motor west
Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best
Get your kicks on Route 66

Following up on the earlier story of a “black panther” being caught on video near Joplin, Missouri, it is always good to hear results of an investigative inquiry to test height and more.

The above video taken on Saturday, July 5, at a company on old Route 66, east of Galena, Kansas, is of a domestic cat, says Matt Peek, fur-bearer biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

The department did what they should have to determine how big the cat was. Peek and two others from the department traveled to Galena, last Thursday, July 17th, with a digital camera and a 15-inch-tall by 64-inch-long piece of cardboard to conduct their own experiment. The cardboard was placed in the spot where the cat is seen on the surveillance video and was photographed.

“The length was meant to represent an approximate length of a small adult or subadult mountain lion, but the lion would be 1.5 or two times as tall as the cardboard,” Peek wrote in his report. “The animal in the surveillance footage is nowhere near that.”

He wrote that based on comparisons of the surveillance footage and the experiment photos, the animal in the video is just over 20 inches long, consistent with a house cat.

Peek wrote that mountain lions have proportionally smaller heads than house cats, and mountain lions have proportionally longer tails than house cats.

And the large paw prints found at the scene? Peek wrote that he viewed photos of the prints and saw others while in Galena, and he identified them as dog tracks.

Reached by phone, Peek said he would have been surprised to find a cougar or mountain lion in the Galena area, because it is not part of their habitat. He said though almost every community has a legend about a black panther or cougar, it’s always someone else who had seen it.

“I know there will be people who question anything the state does,” he said. “I think the results are pretty conclusive.”

Galena police Chief Larry Delmont said he is satisfied with the report. He said he would have been concerned about public safety if officials had determined that the animal was a cougar or other big cat.

Take a trip down and over from Route 66. You may help the important things from the past be preserved by assisting the International Cryptozoology Museum to survive, via a donation, greatly needed, as you may directly send a check, money order, or, if outside the USA, an international postal money order made out “International Cryptozoology Museum” to

International Cryptozoology Museum
c/o Loren Coleman
PO Box 360
Portland, ME 04112

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Loren Coleman 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.

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