In classic cat fashion, this mountain lion said “if I fit, I sit.” The place it chose to do so just so happened to be high up in a Utah homeowner’s garage.
It’s not out of the ordinary for a cougar to be wandering around in Utah (and I’m not talking about the gals on that Mormon Wives TV show). It’s estimated that the “Beehive State” (yes, that’s actually Utah’s state nickname) is home to somewhere in between 1,000 and 2,000 mountain lions. So there’s obviously going to be some human-big cat interactions from time to time.
However, it’s usually not normal for a wild animal of this size to approach humans, or infiltrate where humans live. The rule of “they’re more scared of us than we are of them” usually applies, and it would be considered extremely rare for a mountain lion to wander into a home and fall asleep.
But that’s what looks like happened here. Something may have lured the big cat into the area (possibly some sort of food source), and I like to think that it got a full belly and needed somewhere to take a load off. Because mountain lions are known to sleep and rest in elevated places – like trees and nooks in cliffs – it saw the top of the shelf in this Utah garage and said “that’ll be perfect.”
As you might imagine, the presence of a mountain lion – albeit a very still one – scared the living daylights out of the person who stumbled upon it. A realtor that seems to be showing the home said the encounter was a heart-pounding moment… and clarified that the house would still be up for sale:
“10/10 still listing this home! But my heart is still pounding out of my chest!”
Looks like a pretty good spot to snooze.
Some in the comments speculated that the mountain lions was actually taxidermy. I supposed that’s a possibility, and it could have been placed there to frighten anyone who may enter the garage. But seems like it would be a real pain in the you-know-what to move it every time you needed your pop-up canopy (the blue thing the mountain lions is laying on top of).
I’m gonna choose to believe that this apex predator was in need of a power nap, and an open garage door led it to discover the nice, cool, safe place. So it let its guard down, climbed up on the shelf, and got some shut eye for a while. Does a mountain lions being inside of a home make it a house cat? I’m not exactly sure.
But what I do know is social media users got a kick out of the video, and left comments like these:
“Just spray it with a squirt bottle, the kitty cat will get down.”
“The last ‘psst psst’ of my life would be at this moment.”
“Looks like the house has a new anti-theft system.”
“The internet did say there were cougars in the area.”
“Just a little cat nap.”
“Who doesn’t want to buy a house that comes with a free kitty cat?”
