We try to spend at least one day per week at the farm. Our drive lasts about 2.5-3.0 hours if we minimize stops and the traffic cooperates. To make the traffic work in our favor, we try to leave somewhere between 5:30 and 6:00 in the morning. One Saturday morning several months ago we were on the road and passing a piece of pasture labeled "Pancake Hill" (we have no idea why it has that name) which is about a mile from our farm. On the opposite side of the road we both looked and saw a head and a bit of upper body that was in silhouette at the tree line. It was the head of a large cat. Guessing, I thought it was about 20-30 yards from us. It was much bigger than a house cat. Of course Peg, who has never seen an animal along the side of a road that she didn't hop out of the car to get a closer look at, got out of the car, ran across the road, down the bar ditch, and up to the fence to get a look. At that point the cat stood up quickly, turned, "flapped" its long tail, and ran into the woods. Since that morning, the two of us have debated which of the Texas big cats we saw.
If you go online to "Cats of Texas," there is a good article by W.B. Davis from Texas A&M University and revised by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. It presents the Texas cats and gives some information about them. To this day, I can't figure out what big cat we saw, but know it was not a bobcat because of the long tail.
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