Kristine Frank from Brookhaven, Georgia said that she woke up in the middle of the night to find an exotic wild African cat, which is twice the size of a normal cat, lurking in her bedroom as she was sleeping.
Normal cats reach a height of about nine inches from floor to shoulder, but a serval cat, which is what the lady saw that night, can grow up to 24 inches from floor to shoulder. The serval cats are not native to Georgia and are also illegal to own as a pet in the state.
Authorities believe that this was, indeed, someone’s pet they smuggled into the community and now…it’s on the loose. That’s correct, it got away after being scared off by Kristine after she yelled at it.
“I’m laying in bed and I hear a thump on my bed,” Kristine told WTHR. She said she opened her eyes and saw it was defintiely a serval cat. “It was big. It was scary. You can’t predict what a wild animal is going to do when it’s cornered.”
After she screamed and ran out of the room, the cat cowered in a corner while her husband carefully opened a patio door to let it out. It eventually ran outside and vanished into a nearby golf course.
“We think it’s staying within a relatively small area of the neighborhood,” Lt. Wayne Hubbard with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources told WTHR.
The Georgia DNR said they placed a trapped in the area in an attempt to catch it and relocate it to an animal sanctuary. They said that the cat requires a proper place to live where she can exhibit her natural behaviors that are just impossible for them to display living in a private home.
“This could have gone horribly different. I have an elderly dog. I’m lucky I don’t have any small children anymore,” Kristine said. “This is a wild animal and they shouldn’t be pets.”