Halls of the Dark Muse

I was out taking my walk today, and there is this field on the slope of a hill that I usually cut through when I go walking and down blow at the bottom of the slope is a little creek. Generally this time of year the hillside consists mostly of waist high dried and often prickly and thorny weeds, and there is only one narrow pathway which because it has been used a lot is all trampled down to just a dirt path, where you can really easily and comfortably walk, but last time I went out a couple days ago I noticed that apparently a fire had swept through this area, so today when I went I took my camera because I wanted to take some pictures of the scene.

Because of the fire, all the weeds had been wiped out so it was just bare flat scorched ground and it did look kind of cool in this big black wasteland so I was just exploring around finding some odd and interesting things which had survived the fire and been discarded and hidden among the weeds, for instance I found something that looked like maybe it had been a shower head still attached to the part that attaches to the wall. So I was taking some pictures of the debris and exploring the area when I saw something down by the creek drinking.

At first I really couldn't see much of it, I could just tell that it was some kind of animal, because its back was too me and it was hunched over drinking from the creek, but then after a moment it lifted its head for an instant, and I saw the tips of its ears and a glimpse of the profile of the face, and it looked to be very much a feline of some sort, but it was bigger than any house cat I have ever seen. It was at least twice the length of even a particularly large common house cat, and was approximately about the size of a gray fox. But it also did not resemble any type of wild cat I am familiar with, and besides the only type of wild cats we have around this area where I live are Mountain Lions, and well it obviously wasn't that.

I just kept watching it, hoping it would move or turn so I could get a clearer look, trying to figure out what the heck it could be, and running different species of cats I know of in my mind to see if any fitted in and just thinking over and over, there is now way that is a house cat, that is just way too big to be a house cat.

Finally I decided I had to try and get a closer look at this thing, but from where I was standing it was too steep to try and go down the slope, so I had to walk back a ways to find an easier way down, and by the time I got down (as well it probably heard me coming) it was long gone, and the ground was too hard and scorched to locate any prints, which would have given me a better idea of the animals size and species.

But there is no way it was any kind of animal that I am readily familiar with.