Newtown/Southbury sightings

For some background: I have lived in CT all of my life, and lived in Newtown from when I was seven, up until a year ago, when I moved into Southbury. In Sandy Hook, my house bordered a state forest--there was a group of bobcats that, for several years, lived in a save formed by two large rocks leaning against each other. I know what bobcats look like. My home in Southbury borders a state forest which in turn borders lake zoar, which bordered the previous state forest in Sandy Hook.

Several months ago I was driving on a road adjacent to lake zoar (it leads to big satellites and is an area popular with birders because of bald eagle sightings). The road dips down gently to a plot of farmed land with the lake on your right. I was driving with the farm on my left, lake on my right, and observed a large cat stop momentarily in my headlights, before dipping under the guard rail and slinking towards the woods beyond the farm--towards state forest. This cat was bigger than any bobcat I have observed, but because of the time of night I only was able to see its eyes (the glare) and its figure for a brief moment.

The second sighting was about a week and a half ago, I was driving after picking up my morning sandwich and was going through the small windy road that goes through Southbury Training School. If you are familiar with this road, I was on the top of the hill, after the sharp turn, where there are pine trees on your left and right. There is a point where the left side is clear, and there is a downward sloping hill. A few hundred yards down the road intersects with Brown Brook Road. At this point I observed what I thought was a fox coming towards me on the other side of the road. As I got closer, I observed that it was actually a small cat. I stopped my car and it sort of looked at me for a second, before jumping off to the side of the road and going into the woods. I managed to get a good look and it did not seem to have the same features as bobcats I have previously observed--It was definitely an infant. This is particularly interesting because it suggests that larger cats may be mating in the area. I have read that many people think the cats simply roam up the far east, but this sort of speaks against that theory.

The last sighting is not a direct sighting, but tracks which I observed. I did not get a chance to photograph these tracks, so I cannot verify this (maybe I will try to get these). I'm not a track expert, but the state forest near my house in Southbury have plenty of swampland. The mudbeds can preserve tracks for quite some time when it does not rain. I observed what appeared to be a large cat track. It did not have claw marks and had three small bumps towards the bottom--which made me think it was not a dog. This was previous to either sighting, last summer.