A cougar named Elvis plays a starring role in my book, Cougar Frenzy. Cougars are cute and beautiful and scary all at the same time. They are an animal you hope to see but never want to meet in the wild. I’m not a cougar expert, so I did a lot of research to prepare for writing this story and (as always) I couldn’t fit everything I learned into the book. So here are some nuggets you might not know about cougars:
- The cougar is the second largest cat in the Americas – only the South American jaguar is bigger. Cougars that live closer to the poles tend to be bigger than those near the equator and the biggest cats in Canada are in the interior of British Columbia and the Kootenay Mountains. Males can range 63 – 90 kg and females 40 – 50 kg.
- The cougar’s tail can be a full metre long! That’s 1/3 of its total body length!
- Cougars are crepuscular, which means they are active at twilight – either dawn or dusk. Other crepuscular species include skunks, deer, rabbits, owls, and fireflies.
- In Canada, cougars feed primarily on deer, though they may also hunt elk, rabbits, mountain sheep/goats, grouse and even porcupines. Sick cougars or young cougars with poor hunting skills sometimes prey on livestock. More than ten years ago, a problem cougar in the Crowsnest Pass fattened up on barn cats and dogs. It quickly learned how easy that prey was to catch and killed more than 60 cats and 3 dogs before being shot by an upset rancher.
- A cougar can be silent, which is why some people call it the ghost cat, but it can also make a great variety of noises. Cougars can chuckle, whistle, or make housecat sounds, like mews, hisses, spits and growls. Females can make a piercing scream – a very scary sound to hear when you’re sitting around a campfire at night! Click here to listen to a cougar’s growl.
