Another Jefferson County resident, Dusty Massie, has reported that he saw a jet-black large predator cat on a Jefferson County road about six weeks ago.

Massie, a Port Townsend painting contractor, believes he saw a large black cat about six weeks ago, or four weeks earlier than the sighting turned in by Forrest Aldrich last week. Massie said he saw the cat near Port Ludlow; Aldrich saw it near Point Hudson in downtown Port Townsend.

But Massie added a twist to the story.

He said he is certain it was a panther, not a dark-colored cougar.

Here’s Massie’s report of what he saw when driving out of Port Ludlow on Oak Bay Road toward its intersection with Beaver Valley Road, (SR 19).

“I saw that cat as well, except it's not a cougar, it's a panther!” he wrote. “I know how crazy that sounds, but I'm telling you that I was close enough to it to see the color of its eyes – yellow.”

He said the big black cat also had small ears, “half the size of a cougar’s” ears.

It was daytime about a mile from the Port Ludlow village commercial complex, said Massie, who operates Sunshine’s Painting out of Port Townsend.

“The thing just leaped out of the brush,” he wrote in an email. “I think it must have been sitting there waiting to cross the road and took a shot, but the spot in the road where it was crossing was at a bend in the road so it didn't hear me coming till he was right in front of me no more than 30 feet at best.”

The eyes were what spooked Massie.

“Those eyes have haunted me since then, still right now, it's giving me chills. It looked right at me and for a brief second we locked eyes and then it was gone like a dream, like it was never there,” he said. He added, “There was death in those eyes.” The big cat, he said, “looked evil and angry.”

Massie said he tried to report the sighting, calling the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office where he was directed to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. But it was unclear who to talk to at WDFW so he never filed a formal report.

Aldrich’s sighting came on Oct. 1 on the hillside to the north and above Point Hudson. He watched what he thought was a large black cougar sit and then walk into deeper brush from a point about 120 yards away.

WDFW officials have said they doubt it is a panther, instead noting that some wild animals develop a black pigment to their fur.

Mick Cope, Regional Wildlife Program Manager in the Olympic Peninsula for WDFW, said it’s possible, although very rare, for a Northwest cougar to be black. “There can be very dark versions of animals,” he said. “They’re called melanistic, pigment that makes things darker, and it affects birds, a lot of things. I never heard of that for a cougar but it could be. I’m pretty sure there’s not a panther around here.”