Neighborhood on Edge After a Mountain Lion Is Sighted : Thousand Oaks: The animal was seen Monday roaming a hillside within 30 feet of a North Ranch yard before disappearing over the ridgeline.

As residents watched with fear and curiosity, a mature mountain lion prowled a hillside menacingly close to North Ranch homes Monday, the latest sighting of the big cats in Ventura County neighborhoods in recent months.

Several residents and a sheriff’s deputy watched the mountain lion roam a hillside within 30 feet of one back yard for half an hour Monday morning before the cat disappeared over the ridgeline and into thick brush.

The animal’s appearance was more of a curiosity than a concern for most of the residents of Blue Mountain Circle, a quiet Thousand Oaks cul-de-sac of 45 townhouses built at the foot of a hill about five years ago.

“It’s kind of exciting to be that close to nature,” Susan Black said.

The tawny, 80-pound cat came within 10 yards of her back yard before stopping on the other side of a four-foot wrought-iron fence. The creature could be seen clearly as it stopped, lay down close to the fence and then meandered up the hill.

“I’m more concerned for the neighbors with pets,” she said. “Cats are lunch for that thing.”

That is why neighbor Randi Gorbis plans to keep her 25-pound Shiva Inu dog indoors for a while.

“If he’s looking for food, he’s not coming to my place,” she said. She said she was also concerned that her 11-year-old daughter will be too frightened to play outdoors.

“I’m not happy about it,” she said.

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The cat was first spotted by a garbage collector, who alerted resident Dean Merkel about 10 a.m. Merkel in turn called the Sheriff’s Department.

“I’ve seen coyotes out there, but this is the first mountain lion I’ve seen,” said Merkel, who moved to the neighborhood four years ago.

It is in new neighborhoods such as North Ranch, where subdivisions sprout in canyons between hills that were once remote, that the sightings are most common, California Department of Fish and Game officials said. But the bigger problem is the lions’ growing population.

“We have a glut of mountain lions in this state,” state Fish and Game spokesman Patrick Moore said. “They are just being seen everywhere.”

Last month, a mountain lion carried off a Fillmore man’s 75-pound Siberian husky, and is suspected of taking nine calves from a neighbor’s herd. Since December, mountain lions have been spotted in residential neighborhoods throughout the small city.

Last weekend, residents in the Porter Ranch development six miles east of Simi Valley spotted lions roaming their streets and a nearby golf course.

“Development is always a problem,” Moore said. “But the real problem is the animal population.”

Moore said about 6,000 mountain lions roam the state today, double the number alive 13 years ago. And since the passage of Proposition 117 in 1990, it has been illegal to hunt mountain lions without a special 10-day permit from Fish and Game, Moore said. The permit is issued only if the lion is apt to cause damage or injury or is a threat to humans.

Mostly, mountain lions are fearful of people. They are nocturnal animals that usually feast at night on deer, which are prevalent in the North Ranch neighborhood, Moore said.

“What you probably saw was a cat still looking for a bite,” Moore said.

He said female mountain lions weigh about 80 pounds, while a typical male weighs about 115 pounds and can get as heavy as 150 pounds. The telltale sign of a real mountain lion, as opposed to false sightings often reported, is a tail as long as the cat’s body, Moore said.

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He also said that mountain lions--also known as cougars and pumas--are as nimbly and quiet as household cats .

“You can walk by them without noticing them,” he said.

He said no game warden has been assigned to track the Thousand Oaks mountain lion because it is considered a “no-harm cat.” The animal apparently did not threaten anyone Monday, he said.

Though reports of mountain lions attacking humans are rare, two California women were killed in separate attacks last year. A 58-year-old woman was mauled in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park in San Diego County in December and a 40-year-old woman was killed in El Dorado County in April.

Those were the first mountain lion-related fatalities reported since 1909.