Mountain Lion Kills Monrovia House Cat

A Monrovia resident chased away a mountain lion from his hillside neighborhood Thursday night, but not before it killed his cat.

Maxwell Harvey was pulling up to his home in the 400 block of Lotone Street at about 10 p.m. Thursday when he saw the mountain lion in a neighbor's driveway. He noticed it had something clasped in its jaws.

"I saw something in its mouth but I didn't know what it was," Harvey said. "Then I saw it was my cat so I started to chase after it."

The mountain lion dropped the cat, an orange tabby named "Brett Favre," in the street a few houses down before scampering back up into the foothills.

Harvey said it came back down about an hour later looking for its kill, but he had already picked up the cat's body.

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The sent out a robo-call Friday . Residents in Sierra Madre also reported seeing a mountain lion roaming the streets on Monday.

Harvey said that bear sightings in his neighborhood are common but spotting mountain lions was unusual.

Former State Senator Dick Mountjoy, who lives in the neighborhood, said he was told by Monrovia Animal Control officers that the animal was spotted in his driveway Friday morning.

"He just walked up the driveway. I think he was just going back up where he was from," Mountjoy said.

Mountjoy keeps a chicken coop in his backyard and had to put razor wire around it to keep mountain lions out, he said.

"One time a mountain lion got in there and he killed all my chickens," Mountjoy said.

A few years ago, Mountjoy said he found a dead deer on his property with its front leg chewed off by a mountain lion. He believes they have become too populous in the foothills behind Monrovia.

Mountain lions are classified as a "specially protected species" but are not on the endangered species list, according to the Department of Fish and Game's website. The department estimates that there are about 4,000 to 6,000 mountain lions living in the state.