There it was, this summer, a headline in the daily paper: Neighbors on watch after cougar kills goat.

Cougar sightings are not unusual where I live, in Ashland, Oregon, with its surrounding ranch lands and its proximity to wilderness. But this wasn’t just a shadowy figure glimpsed in the upper echelons of Lithia Park. This was serious—a mother and her two cubs wandered into town, hunted for supper and found a prize Nubian goat in a neighbor’s yard. I instantly think of my own two daughters, still in diapers, toddling around in the backyard. Yikes.

When I first arrived in Oregon, I practically kissed the ground. I had moved from Philadelphia, where I grew up surrounded by brick and cobblestones, to a place where green met my eye everywhere I turned. To me it was wild country—the trees alone were like nothing I’d ever seen. Never mind the stars and the Milky Way, meteor showers, rainbows, the apples, blackberries, the smell of mint in the summer, the musk and crackle of leaves burning in the fall.

I was only planning to visit a while. That was nine years ago. Oregon is home now. I can say that: I have permission. A friend once told me you had to get three native Oregonians to say it’s OK to stay. I did.

The place we rented wasn’t much, but the land was astonishing. Behind us there was just one house, then the back half of Lithia Park, and then 180 miles of unpaved, untamed wilderness. Hummingbirds arrived at my feeder a few minutes after I hung it up and stayed all year. Northern Flickers pecked at the ground in my side yard. A family of deer had worn a path through the grass and each morning, they rested about three feet from my side door for a few hours. I took pictures, as did friends and family who came to visit, snapping photos in my driveway like people on safari, awed by the postcard view of the cascade foothills.

I loved it, but I did develop one teensy problem with all this nature: I was afraid to take out the trash. Or walk into town alone. Or sit in the backyard more than a comfortable two feet from the door.

The fear was not completely unfounded. One of our first days in our rented house, we awoke to see puffs of white fur floating through the air in the yard. We followed the fluff to its source (or what was left of it): the head and paw of a domestic cat.

We finished our coffee and canvassed the neighborhood. Our neighbors were unfazed, even slightly amused. No, it wasn’t their cat. They did hear a catfight. And, they added, they wouldn’t be surprised if a cougar was the culprit.

The next day, I did what any self-respecting city girl would do—I called the police. They patiently referred me to the Department of Fish & Wildlife. The guy from ODFW explained that it was more likely a bobcat than a cougar.

“You get cougars there,” he said, “but they would disembowel their food in a private spot. Not decapitate it in the yard.”

Sheesh.

“Your victim was probably dragged there,” he offered. I thank him and hang up. Quickly.

We bury the victim in our backyard, noticing a tag with an address. “Siam,” his name is, a longhair Siamese, Felis domesticatus. A city cat.

When I deliver the tag to the owner, he says he figured “a critter got Siam.” I walk home, noticing at least three signs for missing pets. I’m Dorothy in the haunted forest. The sky darkens; vultures shriek from the trees. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. I walk faster.