Originally Posted by
Flying Merkel
You're lucky. Bob cats do not want to be seen.
Bobcats I see fairly frequently, but what the OP saw was a young mountain lion. Those are far more rare. Only seen a mountain lion in the wild once and it was while hiking. After climbing a little rise my daughter and I looked back and saw a mountain lion crossing the trail behind us. It looked very strange and I had to look for a moment before realizing that it had a large squirrel in its mouth with the tail hanging out to one side. The lion headed up towards a bush near the trail and its two cubs came bounding out to play with their lunch.
Just a minute earlier we must have been directly between the mother cat and her cubs and although we hadn't seen them at that time I'm sure we were being watched very closely.