Squamish resident Joe Rommel had a bird's eye view to witness the demise of an unlucky cat.On Friday (Set. 9) evening, Rommel and his wife were relaxing in their backyard when they heard a stern command from their neighbours to go inside immediately."We went inside to take a closer look from one of the upstairs windows to see what all the fuss was about," he explained to The Chief in a letter to the editor. "The cat was back! It was only a week or so ago when we saw her last. This time she chose our neighbor's back yard."Rommel said the cougar was cornered and then killed."She so clearly made the wrong choice with place and time as she stared down the hollow barrels of two 12 gauge shotguns," he said. "The neatly uniformed conservation officers were only doing their jobs. However, it was two against one. She looked confused and frightened. A few minutes later we heard the shots."The cougar's death was one of three in the last 24 hours in Garibaldi Highlands, officials believe that the three cats are related and had no choice but to remove the animal after several close calls throughout Squamish.On the morning of Aug. 26, two cougars were found eating the remains of a local family's cat in front of a house on Tantalus Road and the next night a pair of cougars were found outside a house on Bluebird Place playing with the owners shoes.In both cases, the cats didn't appear to be afraid of human contact.It's been a summer full of issues with cats, as an aggressive cougar caused the closure of several recreational trails near Alice Lake in mid-August.A cougar also spooked a cyclist in Crumpit Woods on June 10, which led to the creation of a cougar patrol for the Test of Metal Bike race on June 18.Check the print edition of The Chief for more details on this story.
