Deputies Use ‘Hilarious’ Tactic to Handle Bobcat Home Intrusion in Colorado

When Amy Aufret Shelly turned in for the night earlier this month, she wasn’t expecting to wake up to an unexpected visitor in her Colorado home. That evening, she had propped open one of her doors because her cat, Meatball, hadn’t yet come back inside. He did return later—but so did another cat. A much larger and wild one. A bobcat, to be precise.

“I] woke up at 4 a.m. to crashing and banging,” Shelly wrote. “And came face to face with this guy.”

The bobcat had perched on a shelf in her living room and refused to budge.

Shelly called for help, and soon, two deputies from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office arrived at 4:55 a.m., armed with a tool they thought might help—and which Shelly thought was “hilarious.”

One of the cops pulled out the laser pointer on his taser and thought it just might work at luring the bobcat out of the house.

“Cats are all the same,” one deputy is heard saying in the video. “They all like the same thing.”

Shelly responded, “It’s not a normal cat.”

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, who shared the video wrote afterwards, “Cats and dogs chase laser pointers, but this bobcat was not impressed. When it wandered into a Ken Caryl home and cozied up behind the TV, our deputies thought outside the box—trying their TASER’s green lasers to coax it out. The bobcat’s verdict? Not interested. It left at its own pace, right out the open back door. Guess some intruders just aren’t dazzled by our high-tech tricks.”

It was worth a try, but ultimately the laser pointer didn’t draw the bobcat’s attention. So, the team contacted Colorado Parks and Wildlife, who suggested simply opening the back door and waiting for the animal to leave.

“After four hours, that did the trick,” Shelly wrote. She also noted that Meatball was unharmed by the crash visitor.