5 Minute Freewrite: mountain lion

Find the prompt here:
https://peakd.com/hive-161155/@mariannewest/day-1750-5-minute-freewrite-sunday-prompt-mountain-lion

Mountain lion. Puma. Cougar. All the same thing? I think so. I've taken to calling them pumas because that's what they call them in southern California, when you read about the ones in the Santa Monica mountains, and the one in Griffith Park. La la la la la. Why haven't I been wanting to go the fiction route with my freewrites lately? I feel like I usually have more fun with them when I turn it into a story. But lately I just have been stream of consciousness writing my thoughts. There have been a lot of distractions around lately when I am doing my freewrites, so maybe that's why? But there's usually a lot of distractions around me when I'm home, too. Of course, I was usually stream of consciousness writing my thoughts at home, too, when I recently picked up doing freewrites again. But I feel like there was a good spell before when I was doing freewrites regularly, that I would write more fictionalized things or absurd stuff, and that's just more fun. But for whatever reason, here I am, not doing that. Mountain lion. I have always loved big cats. I used to want to be a zoologist and save the tigers. I had a t-shirt with a tiger on it. I had (actually still have) a beach towel with tigers and leopards on it. I loved tigers the most. I had an Usborne book about big cats. I did not become a zoologist or any kind of scientist. And tigers are still very endangered. More endangered than when I was a kid? Presumably*.

*Upon a little google searching, this appears to be true. Not sure if this is the most reputable source, but this site has a graph that shows tiger populations have indeed dropped considerably since the mid-1990s, though their numbers have been holding fairly steady in more recent years.

This picture was hanging in my room when I was a kid.
I recently discovered that my mom still had it, and took this pic of it.