Big cat video has Paulding County resident worried

PAULDING COUNTY, Ga. - A woman in Paulding County shot video Tuesday morning of some sort of cat. She said she fears it’s a mountain lion.

Nicole Rivers said she is concerned because of the school nearby and wants state officials to come out to investigate.

"I've never seen a cat like that," said Rivers. "It was much larger than the video makes it appear to be. I've never seen a household cat that size. And in the video it was crouching down in the grass, there was another domestic cat it was going after. But definitely wasn't just a regular domestic cat."

She sent the video over to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife division. Two biologists reviewed the videos and they determined the species in the video is a domestic cat.

"The one where it's by itself, it looks muscular. You don't have a size reference so maybe, then I look at the sign on the tree," said biologist Chuck Waters.

That helped them determine the actual size of the cat.

The DNR gets videos and pictures all of the time on cats. Waters shared another video with me from this summer where it appears a mountain lion was lying in the road in the Big Canoe area of north Georgia. But when he went out there and stood in the same spot as the cat, they could determine the cat in the video was only two feet in length, not the size of a mountain lion.

In the case in Paulding County, Waters said there are other factors they could tell from the video.

"You take in the totality of circumstances. People are out. It was this morning. They're getting ready for work; a lot of activity around there. There's an unconcerned house cat licking its paws. It didn't appear to me to warrant an emergency response," said Waters.

But Waters said he wants residents like Nicole to always call when they are concerned because after all, there was a tiger walking down Interstate 75 just the other week.