Cat Burglar Gives Paws to Homeowner

Robert Morey was panicked as he dialed 911 and told the dispatcher an intruder was lurking somewhere in the house in the pre-dawn darkness Thursday.

That’s when he heard the low, guttural growl, turned and confronted his visitor--a large bobcat that sat staring at him from the kitchen counter.

The 25-pound lynx had strayed from the hills into Morey’s back yard in the 3000 block of Eminencia Del Sur, a newly developed neighborhood. Then, it’s believed the big cat tried to escape from Morey’s two huskies by jumping into what appeared to be an opening.

But the opening turned out to be a double-layered window to the family room. The bobcat “was so fast that it broke through the glass and didn’t even get cut,” Lt. William Trudeau said.

“We’ve seen bobcats down here before, but this was the first time I’ve heard of one going through a window of someone’s house,” Trudeau added.

Neither man nor beast was hurt in the strange encounter, and an Orange County Animal Control officer eventually caught the intruder and released it back into the hills.

The only casualty was Morey’s frayed nerves.

“The dispatcher lady was telling me to calm down and I told her, ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ ” Morey, 35, recounted later Thursday. “I started moving back real slow and it was moving back and forth. It would not take its eyes off me.”

Morey, a developer, said he was awakened about 3:45 a.m. by the sound of glass breaking. He listened for more noises but the house was silent, so he figured he had been dreaming and drifted back to sleep.

Nearly 45 minutes later, he awoke again to the sound of movement downstairs, but thought it was his dogs. When there was more noise 10 minutes later, Morey grabbed his .22 caliber rifle and went to the landing to investigate.

The movement continued, so he turned on the burglar alarm, hoping to scare off the intruder. Silence returned, so Morey switched off the alarm and ventured down the stairs.

That was when he discovered the broken window in his family room.

“And my dogs were outside looking in at me so I thought they had broken the window,” he said. “But they ran to the fence and started barking.”

In the darkness, Morey went into his kitchen to phone 911.

“I was already talking to the dispatcher when I turned on the light and heard this grrrr,” he said. “I just turned to my right and there was this thing sitting right there on my granite counter.

“It was perched there, just six feet away, and it looked like it was going to pounce if I moved,” Morey continued.

He screamed into the dispatcher’s ear. After hearing it was a bobcat, the dispatcher alerted police and stayed on the line with Morey until authorities arrived.

Sgt. Larry Cyr of county animal control put a soft noose attached to a long pole around the cat’s neck and escorted it from Morey’s kitchen about 5:40 a.m.

The window was patched up and Morey cleaned up some light brown fur left by the lynx. He said that although he was used to seeing wildlife in his back yard, such as coyotes and owls, having a bobcat invade his house made him nervous.

“I think I’m going to go buy a bigger gun,” Morey said. “If bobcats are there, then so are the mountain lions, and a .22 rifle would only piss it off.”