Cat Attacks: True Stories and Hard Lessons from Cougar Country

by Jo Deurbrouck, Dean Miller

As many mountain lion attacks have occurred in the past ten years as in the hundred preceding. What's happening? Cougar populations are rebounding, but these wild cats have fewer and fewer places to live. This is the first unflinching look at what happens when cougars and people cross paths. Impossible to put down, Cat Attacks chronicles mountain lion attacks and encounters that have occurred in the last ten years in the West. These riveting stories of heroes and victims will tell you what to fear, what to ignore, and what to expect when we make room for the cat that is arguably America's most effective largest predator.

Genres: Nonfiction

221 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Jo is the author of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award winner, "Anything Worth Doing." The book tells the true story about the idyllic and tragic journeys of two whitewater adventurers on the last long free whitewater river in the lower 48 states.

"Bottom line, AWD is a love story," says Jo. "It's about two men who loved a river so much they couldn't be satisfied running it the ways thousands do every year. They had to find ways to make this river uniquely theirs."

The book also received an Idaho Book Award Honorable Mention. Jo has contributed to the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, Creative Nonfiction, Paddler Magazine, and others. She is a former whitewater raft guide, an obsessive researcher and a compulsive reviser. She holds a MA in English.

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have too many cougar/puma/mountain lion stories to relate here. They’re beautiful and powerful animals. I suppose you could say the same thing about most mammals in the wild.

The prevailing wisdom in (almost) 2025 is: if a grizzly, playing dead is best - if you don’t move they’ll eventually leave you alone; if a cougar, FIGHT! If you don’t they’ll just drag you away and keep you.

The book is easily read in a few uninterrupted hours. There are some very sad stories. With the bears, it’s more about stumbling upon them in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you’re stalked by a cougar, it has nothing to do with protecting their kittens or self-defense - you’re prey.

So, a marathon runner gets surprised on a trail not so far from suburban sprawl. A family is ambushed in a park. Someone else is picking mushrooms in old growth forest. A brave mother gets between a cougar and her child on a horseback ride and saves the child’s life while sacrificing her own.

It’s hard to read about persons who love the wilds, and the animals and birds who thrive within, losing their lives there. I suppose that’s the same with surfers and swimmers and sharks - the risk they accept.

Sometimes cougar arrive on or near my property. It’s easy enough for them to travel a creek that rises out of the mountains and hunt deer along the way. The creek is less than 100 feet from the door. But without the untamed the wilderness loses too much. And so do we.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scary title, but actually more comprehensive than the other cougar book I recently read. I waver between never wanting to step outside my door again and still having an irresistible desire to see one of these creatures in the wild (from a very safe distance!) The author's point that cougars hunt in a very stealthy way and that humans in general may never know how often they have been "observed" while out in cougar country is poignant, somewhat reassuring, but also unsettling, if all of that is possible. I will definitely be looking over my shoulder more than I used to (as if that's likely to help). I keep trying to come up with some kind of protective gear to consider wearing to reduce the lethality of a possible attack..bike helmets seem to help but something to better protect the neck??? The book definitely got me thinking.

[Amar Pai · Rating 2 out of 5]

I lost a lot of respect for mountain lions after reading this book. They are the wussiest of the wildcats.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well written journalistic approach to documenting stories of cougar encounters in the western U.S. and Canada. Anyone who lives in cougar country should read this book. I don't agree with some of the editorial opinions in the epilogue, but it is always good to try to understand other points of view.
Perhaps mine would be different if it was my 6 year old that got mutilated while walking to school. I have to say that I do pay more attention while walking through the woods after reading these stories. We have lots of cougars in the Pacific Northwest, but fortunately, we also have plenty of deer in town.

[Cindy Poli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for anyone who enjoys the outdoors, especially in the western US, and British Columbia. Like the title says, it is chock full of “True Stories and Hard Lessons from Cougar Country”. I have learned so much from reading this book. And I’ve also learned how foolish I was when I was young and in the cougar’s habitat. Recommend reading!

[Mark Binsted · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I was expecting a book full of antipredator rhetoric especially after a saw where the authors lived. However, this is a wonderful and fair book about cougars. I especially liked that it wasnt just a record of "attack stories" but included natural history of the cougar and other interesting items.

[Elizabeth Crook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting. After my son at age 14 was lost in a canyon and stalked by a mountain lion one night a few years ago, I got obsessed with mountain lions and read everything I could find. This book kept me spellbound. Very well-told stories that will make you short of breath.