My name is Todd Overton. I run Overton Fisheries in the Buffalo/Centerville right on I45. We stock ponds and lakes and offer pond and lake management services. Two days ago we got 100+ pics of this black cat on one of our pond dams. The pics were taken from 150-200 yards away with a digital camera on full zoom. Tell me what you think...

panther

YES!

Clearly a house cat!

House cat.

The second pic makes it look like a house cat on steriods.

Its not a panther, maybe not domesticated, but its a regular cat...that has eaten well

Honestly don't know, but I would have probably shot it and dirt checked it if a rifle was handy.... at first glance it looks pretty big, but the 6th pic looks like its only as wide a one tire lane on that pasture road.

i think is a young panther

dirt check the thing and post some pic

Road is 8' wide.

Nothing more than a slightly big house cat, Look at it related to other stuff, pointed out nicely by mwrighin pic 6, look at pic 2/3 unless thats a four foot ledge down to the ponds then its only maybe 10-14 tall not that big.

thats a big darn cat!

yeah, its not taking up one tire lane, its taking up half the road

The angle of the road makes it look bigger.

It is a normal everyday house cat.

Send the pics to TPWD and they will tell you the same thing!

no clue. house cat i guess.

Never been a confirmed picture/video or corpse of a Black Panther (AKA Black Mountain Lion) and rest assured this is not going to be the ground breaking proof!

I have a black panther style house cat that weighs 12lbs (I just weighed her myself) and measures 29"max from nose to end of tail. Now anybody suggest a method for extrapolation or estimation of the weight of the cat in the pics?

House Cat!!!

Big black tom cat of the domestic variety.

Panther definitely, I've seen one first hand from about twenty yards, no quetsion

house cat with a chupa cross....

has anyone every thought that a black panther is a oversized cat? everyone says its just an oversized cat but whats a panther suppost to look like "A DOG"?????

Black Panthers are FICTION, sorry

Its suppose to look like a Mountain Lion......only black!

You could always try to trap it with a live trap. A large live trap baited with a live chicken would work great, and you wouldn't have to worry about catching coons.

Big House Cat - I've got one that weighs 18lbs and is probably about the same size as this cat or bigger. This one just happens to be black.

Just a House cat

lol, yes a panther is a cat, but certain parts are a completely different shape, this is not a panther. I had a gray cat that went 26 lbs, house cats do get big. Panthers are around the size of a mountain lion, not a bobcat.

that is no house cat, i've seen several of them at my uncles place.

grizzly, no doubt about it

stinger in the earhole just to be sure........

jaguarundi i believe. black panther is just a generic name for jaguarundi

house cat - grew up in the bigbend area, seen many dead panthers - is not a panther

Unclassified Species or Hybrid??

I don't expect to see this cat again, but by all means, I will shoot it if I do.

chupacabra

the jagarundi has a short thick tail
and is a mostly in the brush counrty of s Texas and mexico
not to say one could not wander up here


the # of folks that have no clue about wildlife amaze me

panthers and mountain lions are the same critter
there is no reason why they could not thro a melinistic phase one granted it would be rare but is entirely possible

The 5th pic tells the story, with respect to the trees. Also the road as overtonfisheries states. That is a big cat and I agree with mwright23, I would have dispatched it.

It's a shame there are no photos of it's paw prints in the dirt next to something like a man's hand to get an idea of how big it is. Hard to tell from these photos.

Not one ounce of starting an arguement here.
Black Panthers are around. Few and far between.
Thanks Bittercreek

Very True! Young ones tend to be on the darker shade of
color. Maturity brings out the dark grey and spots.

Thanks Bittercreek

Better take another look at those pics I think I saw a big foot in the brush behind that panther.

I think a big house cat.

Your information is wrong. I spent 6 years studying predatory aminals in Texas and I assure you they are very real. This picture is not one, but they are real.

GATO MALO

My grandad saw a black panther back in 1991 on his ranch in clay county about 25 miles north of Jacksboro. That cat had many others confirm sight of him as well. They have over a 200 mile range over the course of their life. We never saw him again.

dunno about this cat. i am no expert, but it does look pretty large for a house cat.

I do know that large black panthers/cougars DO exist in the wild in the southern United States. I walked up on one eating its dinner about 10 years ago. No question that it was solid black, and no question about its size (BIG, bigger than my 90lb dog). I will never forget it and remember it like it was yesterday. It was laying down eating when I walked over a small hill. It stood up and stared right at me, and let out a low moan/growl. I backed off slowly, made it back to my vehicle, and never fished that creek again. This was near Jackson, MS.

All I can say is....."more pics, please".

black lion

Put some Meow Mix on the dam to lure him in. That would be a Guiness Book of World Records House Cat.

They are real, I have seen one myself. I saw it just outside of Jermyn in 1994, I was only about 30 yards away. Looked just like a mountain lion only jet black.

I want chicken, I want liver, Meow Mix, Meow Mix, please deliver!!!

I'm a Vegetarian and that is not a house salad....oops, I mean...I'm a Veterinarian and that is not a house cat.

i say a small jaguar
i just think if house cats were to be bigger i think they would just get fat instead of long and slender and the pic shows a long and slender body

i would shoot it just cuz i dont like cats and its kinda scary lookin. bring a gun and next time you see it just pop em in the head so he dont feel it, then get closer and if it is a panther get it stuffed and if its a house cat push it into the pond or take it out to the woods and let the buzzards have it

i have seen a picture of 1 at the store in Gordon, Texas
taking from a game cam

just a big dumn black house cat

I don't know what it is,but it's def. not a house cat. Look how long it is when it's laying across the road,compared to a vehicle.

I can say for a fact, due to my expirence in hunting domestic cats....

its just a big house cat.

black panthers don't exist in north america. could be a jaguarundi but it looks too dark unless the color is slightly off because of the resolution, zoom, lighting, etc.

Big old feral cat..dont see any way it could be a black panther...

just watched a documentary on National Geographic channel that also said that thier is no Black panthers, I have seen Mountain Lions in this area but they were all brown in color.

Bigassedicus Felis domesticus.

LOL

yeah and that 'panther' leapt over the fence in a single bound like super puss!

House cat. What is a "panther"?? I thought they only lived in Hollywood and acted in Tarzan movies. Dictionary says there are some dark colored cougars in the Southwest (which includes the Big Bend). Says no panther. In Latin America they are dark colored Jaguars. No panthers. Anywhere.

there is a type of house cat that looks like a panther

Why you guys gotta be hatin on big cats..... Now house cats, I keep a pellet gun next to the door to keep them away but the big cats, they are cool.

Puma yaguarondi

I think its a Gatos Regularous.

Bigfoot plays golf at Heartlines, in Campbell, Tx also.

Panther is just a word used for members of the genus Panthera, the big cats. It includes lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards. The name "black panther" is usually a melanistic dark morph of the jaguar or the leopard. They would appear jet black at a distance but the characteristic spots of the jaguar or leopard may be visible when viewed up close as they are a darker color than the rest of the animal. This does not show what I have just described. This animal is not shaped anything like any member of the big cats. It is more than likely just a big black house cat or feral cat.

That is a house cat. When it lays across the road, it only takes up the width of one side of the road, tire path. Fake!

+1 lol

Not sayin they are real....not sayin they arent....but if they are real then why hasnt someone shot one, or caught one? I mean as many hunters as there are in texas or anywhere around here, why hasnt someone seen this thing while sittin in the stand? It just seems like if it is real it would be recognized as a true species....alot of people have "seen" them, and i am not negating what you saw, but why is there no proof? overtonfisheries ground check that critter next time and we will put this case to rest.
PS I bet some of those fish yall are breeding would bring him in!

on second thought look at the t posts in the last pic....then look at how big that "lion" is

what this guy said, and for those that said they "studied" and there are black panthers in Texas, you should write a formal complaint to your school/university, and ask for you money back, because they lied. The only place you will see a black panther in Texas is at the zoo or in your dreams.

When I was a kid in the early 70's my uncle had some pictures of a black cat that his father-in-law killed during deer season in nothern Louisianna with buck shot. He had several pictures of it hanging from a tree with his father-in-law standing next to it. They were black and white polaroid type pic's and the cat was very long. I don't know what it was as far the the type cat, but they called it a black panther and he was probably 6 foot tall and the cat hanging from the tree was at least that long strecthed out if my memory serves me right. But then again I was about 10 years old when I seen the pictures. All I know is they called it a black panther and I seen the pictures.

Ive heard of Black Panthers here in Texas all my life.Running coon hounds all over Texas at night,for almost my whole life,Farmers and Ranchers all over would swear they exist.Myself i dunno.

IDEA! Put a five gallon buket, ice chest or something of known size in the same spot where the cat was, then take pics the same as the cat pics where taken.
I believe in Panthers, have never seen one myself, but have heard 2 eyewitness accounts of sightings and even a dead one, that I beleive because the witnesses are very reliable honest people.

lmao

House cat gone rogue!

Hey Todd, I've got a hand full of distress calls, camo, and a .243 thats killed its share of critters. Next time you get a slow day, we could sit exactly where the pic was taking and try to solve this problem. I'll call it in and you shoot it in the face!

That's a great idea! I have to laugh at those that say it's too small to be a panther/leopard/jaguar though. I guess they think those cats are born fully grown.

What do I think it is? I have no idea, but it sure is fun to watch all the responses, particularly the ones that are so adamant.

Looks like a big housecat. compared to the plants along the bank, and the bank itself. As for killing it. I dont mean to start an argument, but arent wild cats usually good at keeping rodents/snake and insect populations down, or do they cause more destruction than good? Not a cat person!

A Big Black Cat/Panther? Hard to tell. It is big.

I am not an expert, but Nope, not a "panther" I have hunted and killed cougars and that is not a melanistic cougar or jaguar or a jagurnndi from Central America. Damn big house cat probably feral and needs to be taken out, before it eats to many more quail.


_________________________

Did you not notice the blue F-150 behind the cat? You can't see it 'cuz the Black Panther is so big!

Look at its head and muscle tone, that is a panther, we have numerous reports of them and mountain lions in east texas along with plenty of gators. The photos speak for themselves. The zoom really says alot, those pics are from a distance, a mere house cat would look like a rabbit or a rodent of some sort, that is a giant! I believe it is a panther from what I can see, no expert but thats a big !@!! cat whatever species it may be.

Bass bug....LMAO

Popular opinion here is that it's nothing more than a plain ole house or ferrel cat. Probably so, but that's one jumbo sized cat.

Tail length, ears.....Nothing resembles anything from a big cat family.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJmP_MBuD7w&feature=related

http://www.drodd.com/gump/party.wav
Forrest Gump: Sorry I had to fight in the middle of your Black Panther party.

Very uncharcteristic for a Jaguarundi to be so bold as to be out in the open and during the day. Also, unless escaped from captivity, way out of it's range. More likely a feral cat of the domestic variety. I have trapped many of them and they can get huge when feral. Survival of only the fittest ones makes quite an impact.

We've all seen 1000s of house cats, have we not? Show me a house cat that when scaled up to size, will look proportionately like the cat in those pics.

Right now I am thinking it is a hybrid of some sort.....

As for myself and the others that saw it, we will never believe it was an overgrown house cat.

Sorry, to rain on your black panther party.
Just a big o Tom Cat.

Cool video! Take a close look at the black cat's tail in the last few frames. That same pattern can be seen in overton's photos.

Unfortunately, the jawline on overton's cat doesn't look the same as the jaguar's. His looks more like the jaguarundi's. Check these photos...
http://images.google.com/images?q=Jaguarundi&ie=UTF-8

Jaguarundis are diurnal, meaning they feed in the daytime. Check out this article...
http://www.anomalist.com/features/jag.html
(range in the ballpark too)

House cat that found Roger Clemens steriod stash?

panther there are a few down that way look how broad the face is

maybe a panther pretty though

what you need to do is take the same camera and zoom all the way in (as you said you did with these pics) on the bank and take a picture of a 6'0 man and post that picture and let us compare!

House cat. Road is all the size reference you need.

thats a good idea..put a few objects in the pic to distinguish size....like some buckets or something....are those regular t posts or what?

Better yet, have a 6'ft.man stand next to the cat! (I'm only 5'9" or I'd volunteer!)

It is a housecat I have two that are freaking huge all they do is eat.

Just look at the surrounding plants,trees and the t-post in the last photo. This is a feral cat of domestic origin. Look at the ears in 2nd photo. No big kitty here,just plump!

Wow thats kinda freaky, but cool at the same time

Guess that's why I've never seen one, been looking at the wrong time of day! Jaguarundi it is!

puma

So all those big black wild predator cats in Latin America are figments of people's imaginations? Sorry, but you are incorrect. A "black panther" is any black cat of the Panthera family. That includes jaguars, leopards, and cougars (mountain lions). Jaguars and mountain lions are found in North America, can breed together, and both used to be found in Texas. While no black mountain lion has ever been proven to exist, it is possible. Black Jaguars are known and proven to exist.


Look at the following picture:


My first response would be that it's a domestic cat, but let's look at it rationally.

A dirt road on a ranch dam is a little wider than the average truck. A NEW GM full size truck is 80 inches wide at the wheels. Figure there is a little room to move side to side on the road so we'll conservatively add 18 inches (a wheel width on either side) and call the road 98 inches wide.

Now look at that picture and you see the cat laid out straight and from head to tail it is about half the road, maybe a little less. So let's say the cat from head to tail is 49 inches. From the other pictures, the tail is about 1/3 of the total length. So the body is about 33 inches long.

The average domestic cat has a 18.1 inch head/body length with tails averaging 11.8 inches in length for a total average length of 29.9 inches. So by our guesstimation earlier based on the road picture, this cat is around 20 inches longer in length than the average domestic cat. 20 inches is over a foot and a half. And the longest domestic cat ever recorded was 48 inches in length and most that size are fat cats.

Look at the picture and that cat is definitely not fat and has long legs. Adult mountain lions are close to 8 feet in length. From the above measurements and looking at the cat, I would have to say this is a young black panther.

It would be nice if the next time you went out there, you took pictures from the same spot and sent man down there so we could use his height to compare the cat against.

...

...

I would have to agree with some of the folks on here. That sure does not look like a regular house cat! My family has a place up in that same area and there was once a tiger roaming around loose. I know for a fact that there's a wildlife rescue or something like that less than a mile from our place that has had some of its animals get out a time or two. So, lord knows whats roaming around out there

why would you shot a house cat that isnt bothering anything?

Jaguarundis do not have spots!

just cause you dont see it bothering something does not mean a ditch cougar did not just finish screwing something up and they a are certainly on their way to ruin something.
I dont have any animosity toward house cats in the house but there is no place for free range or feral cats in the world

the road he's laying on is a little bitty dirt road, probably barely wide enough for a truck to drive down, that aint no paved 98" road, it's a house cat,a REAL panther would be stretched out all the way across that road. It's funny how a little black house cat can cause this much contraversy. NO BLACK PANTHERS IN TEXAS!

the person that took the pic states the road is 8 ft. Most of
us are surrounded by 8 ft walls at this moment. How many
of you have seen housecats that are 4 ft long ?

Most likely a Jaguarundi.

MO

House cat. Road is higher on side you are looking at cat from, so it makes cat look longer. Cat is really only covering part of left side and part of area that would be under truck. You can also see in the pick where the cat is sitting in the grass by the lake that the tufts of grass are taller. Go put a 5 gallon bucket out where you saw this cat and take pics, bucket will sit taller than cat did.

REAL panthers do not start off at 8 feet long. They grow from a small size, much like all warm blooded creatures.

A truck is 80" wide. Add a wheel width (9") to each side and you get 98". I think it's HIGHLY likely that the dirt road is a MINIMUM of 98" wide. Look at the other pictures and you can see tire tracks well inside the edge of the road which means the road should be even wider than 98".

That's no 4 foot tall t-post in the background. That looks like atleast a 10 foot fence. Look at the height of the post conpared to the road that the poster says is 8 foot wide. That makes that cat about 1.5-2 feet tall and 4 foot long. That description doesn't match any HOUSE Cat that I have ever owned. jmo

It looks happy enough chilling in the sun by the water something I can relate to, I doesn't look like a house cat to me...but I would defer to the experts at TPWD send them the photos and see what they think

As far as killing it...

Just remember what Jimbo said...."Its coming right for us!!!"
IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!!

House cat,

Had the same thing on Monster Quest with a Black cat on film..Looked identical to this, like it was some big cat free roaming.. then they reset it up and took the measurements. sure enough what appeared to be 4 foot long and 2 foot high was merely half. Showed several instances in different locations, all came back as much smaller sizes.

I would love to see pics of a 5 gallon bucket sitting on the road at the same spot, zoomed in as close as you could get it.

why would you put a 98" road next to your pond... I think that road may be around 90 inches and the angle of the photo you are measuring it by is impossible to tell how long the cat is... I have no idea what it is but I can go take a picture on the highway of a cat and make it look as long as the road itself from the right angle... so there is no way to tell how long the cat is comparing it from that angle of picture...

your obviously exaggerating its a house cat

WHAT THE HELL IS A HOUSE CAT?

We're gonna need a bigger boat

I know Todd Overton and he doesn't make a lot of stupid mistakes. If that were a common cat, he would have known it.

Its a Cat, its Black, and enjoying itself in the Sun.
Great Pics Todd, thanks for sharing!
Dont Kill it!
Thanks Bittercreek

Go do the 5 gallon bucket thing and put this to rest. Anyone else notice that the grass is taller than the cat when it sits by the lake? Also, for those of you saying 90" and 98" etc. etc. 96" = 8'. Anyway, even better would be to just put a pair of shoes where kitty cat is laid out.

Thanks for the support, Dave.

I work outside. I see wildlife all the time, seriously. My eyes are 20/20 lazervision corrected. I don't make a habit of trying to inflate the truth about anything, but I likely did this time. I'm backing down from estimating 50+lbs but not below 30lbs for the time being. Anyway, my original guess on this cat was 30 lbs. Later I was persuaded by others that it was 50+lbs, after hundreds of pics had been taken, we were all convinced that this was an incredible moment in time, something we had never laid eyes on. We'll probably never see it again. A pack of 8 wild dogs showed up right at that same spot that evening....how random is that??

We intend to show a few more photos of the cat and we intend to take my 4month old puppy (40lbs already) down to the site along with a 5gal bucket and a grown man. Should be revealing. Will be using same camera same zoom. I think my puppy is about the same size of that cat, and so does my wife who also saw the cat first hand. Stay tuned...

If this is a house cat, then I should be even more excited!...I may possibly have witnessed the largest house cat on record, and possibly the baddest of them all as well. If this is what I am forced to concede then I guess I'll be posting my story at felineforum.com instead.

All this over a 20lb domestic feline ?

City folk are sumthin I tell ya

Cool Pics

Can't wait to see the pics...this is better than watching a re-run of jerry Springer.

Will it be a house cat? A wild panther? Will it be bigger than a 5 gal bucket? Stay tuned..same bat time, same bat channel!!!

Now this is entertainment! Cant wait to see the results.

P.S.
Did anyone see the bigfoot hiding in the tree's in 3rd picture.

My cat is 44" from tip to tail. He's a BIIIIIIIIG tomcat.