The call came shortly before1 p.m. Wednesday, me searching for something to top this space. It was from Deerfield, a man with whom I share many interests, the salient one being local history. But this was not a history call; he was calling about a handsome wildcat that’s been spotted many times this summer around Deerfield’s North Meadows. It didn’t catch me by surprise.

Fact is, I had heard about this cat a month or so ago. A friend called to tell me he’d seen photos and, in his opinion, it was obviously not a cougar, but he could understand how people could misidentify it as one. “Maybe that’s the explanation for all these local cougar sightings,” he speculated. “You’d have to see the pictures.”

My friend wanted to e-mail me the photos, which, for one reason or another, never arrived. Now, a few weeks later, I’ve finally viewed them from another source. My fresh Deerfield source showed them to me in his home office, in vivid living color. I concur with my friend: it is not a cougar. My most recent source begs to differ, doesn’t want to rule out the possibility that’s it’s a young cougar. I do not want to argue, just agree to disagree.

One of the two clear photos I studied shows the beautiful orange-brown cat lying across a large, thick blow-down tree, as if ready to pounce on something below; the other shows the cat sitting on the same log, alert and erect, hind quarters on the log, head and shoulders raised to about a 45-degree angle, supported by stiff, straight front legs. The animal has a few large, sparse, black spots across its lower ribcage, and the side profile of the head and ears does not to my eye match that of a cougar. The question in my mind upon viewing the photo was: Is this animal a bobcat or lynx?

My source will likely show the photos to a wildlife biologist who’ll give him a positive identification, one he may or may not accept. Unfortunately, the only indiscernible part of the cat in the photos is its tail, which is hidden behind the horizontal tree it’s laying and sitting on. The long tail of a cougar is its distinguishing feature from afar.

Although not visible, in my opinion, the photographed cat’s tail was a foot or less in length.