A cougar was seen roaming the lower College Heights area on Wednesday evening at roughly the same time a big cat attacked a seven-year-old boy near Port Alberni on Vancouver Island.
Conservation officer Rory Smith said cougars are actually fairly common around the city's green areas.
"Most of the time cougars are there, people don't even see them," Smith said.
As long as they're doing the things cougars usually do, like hunt deer, which were also reported in the vicinity, conservation officers will leave them alone.
"Usually, the only time we start getting concerned is if the cats start showing unusual behaviour," Smith said. "They start losing fear of people, start becoming fairly aggressive."
The problem cougars are usually the older ones who are having trouble catching regular prey and start tracking down household pets. Incidents involving young children in the Central Interior are relatively rare but they have happened.
On the morning of New Year's Eve 2009, two cougars went after an eight-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl in the Grassy Plains area south of Burns Lake.
The children survived, although the boy needed stitches, and the cats were tracked down and killed. The incident was unusual because the pair - a mother and female cub - showed no outward signs of malnutrition.
The cat involved in the Vancouver Island incident Wednesday was also later shot by conservation officers.
"If you start looking statistically across North America, there are far more people injured by ungulates, like deer and elk and moose than there are by predators," Smith said. "They're either gored or trampled on."
That's not to say cougars sightings should not be reported.
"It's nice to know the cats are around so we can monitor the situation," Smith said.
Sightings can be reported by calling 1-877-952-7277.
