It was around 3 a.m. when a strange thumping sound pulled a Calaveras County woman out of her craft room. Twenty feet away, standing in the middle of her living room, was a full grown mountain lion with one of the family cats in its mouth.
The Calaveras Enterprise reported that Christina DesBouillons, 59, and her husband Dennis, 53, had a longtime habit of leaving the front door open overnight so their cats and small dog could wander in and out of their rural foothill home. In late August, a lion followed the pets inside. Christina’s screams startled the big cat into dropping her pet, which did not survive, before it bolted back into the dark.
The encounter joins a growing list of lion run-ins across the Sierra Nevada foothills this year. In a separate Calaveras County incident near West Point, a lion snatched a cat just feet from a family’s doorway, then returned hours later to stare through the sliding glass door. Farther north, Lassen County declared mountain lions an imminent threat to residents. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates 4,000 to 6,000 of the predators roam the state.
The DesBouillons household has made some changes. The three remaining cats and the dog now stay inside, and the front door stays closed. Wildlife officials recommend bringing pets in overnight, securing food and water sources, and reporting encounters to CDFW’s conflict hotline at (916) 358-2917.