The Catamount: Background information when reading North Woods

A mysterious recurring figure in Daniel Mason's Massachusetts-set novel North Woods — starting with the cover image — is the "catamount." This folk name, which originates from the Middle English "cat of the mountaine," usually refers to a particular North American wild cat species, the cougar (Puma concolor), which is also known as the mountain lion, puma, or panther and lives to around age 13 in the wild. The different names are used more or less interchangeably, but historically have corresponded to previously recognized subspecies.

The species once ranged across the whole of the Americas. However, ongoing bounty hunting led to the eastern cougar subspecies being declared officially extinct in 2018 (although it was likely gone since the middle of the 20th century). The cougar's range remains the largest of any Western hemisphere (terrestrial, nonhuman) mammal: from British Columbia to Argentina. In the western USA, the cats are still shot by ranchers and hunters. ...