A local veterinarian has solved the mystery surrounding a huge cat seen climbing up a fence at a Georgetown home.
Giulia di Marzo said she checked her Ring security camera footage Sunday morning to find video of the feline crawling up their fence about 4 a.m.
The video, which shows the large feline crawl up the wooden fence door, walk along the top like a tight rope and then launch itself into their yard, caused quite a stir on the neighborhood forum. Many thought it could be a mountain lion.
"This thing is huge and it has short hair. It is not any kind of domestic cat that I've ever seen before," di Marzo said.
But Dr. Lee Morgan at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital says he and his assistant, Nackia Taylor, were immediately skeptical when they saw the video on Monday morning.
"The idea of a mountain lion being in Georgetown, that was very interesting," Morgan said. "We do have Rock Creek Park. .. But they're such rare animals."
"The first thing I noticed was that there were stripes on the tail, which mountain lions, for the most part, you don't see stripes," Taylor said.
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Morgan says the paws were also too small to be a mountain lion.
Then, the office got a call. One of Morgan's clients who said she believed the video was of her cat Cookie. She lives near the area where the cat was spotted.
"And sure enough, I got the file out and was kind of looking at Cookie and looking at [the video] and I could see the resemblance," Morgan said.
While Cookie is no mountain lion, he is an unusual cat.
He's a Bengal-Burmese-Brown Tabby mix, which Morgan says translates to a very long cat.
"I know Cookie, [he] takes up most of this table here when [he] comes," Morgan said.
Morgan says there's nothing to fear as Cookie is a friendly cat.
"To see him being sort of villified in this way as a mountain cat was a surprise," Cookie's owner Sarah Wasson said.
"He's utterly docile. He's small. He's a domestic cat and we've had him for six and a half years," she said.
But it's still not clear why Cookie was roaming in the middle of the night.
"It's not my business what [he] was doing out at 4 a.m.," Morgan said.
