I like catamount, but like @Dutchess_III, I don’t think I could get used to it. It sounds like something a cop might ask an animal hoarder when filling out a police report: What is your catamount?
I like puma; it’s one of those words that’s kind of fun to say and I had a pair of Pumas once, sneakers that is, that I really liked. And we can’t call them mountain lions because the second highest point in the state is, I believe, the Smyrna landfill. So, around here we call them, or maybe I should say it, “the cougar.” “Alice! I just saw the cougar! I saw the dang cougar, I swear!” Though after reading these comment about the cougar some people do call them pumas, and several people just referred to them as “big cats.”
“The cougar” might as well be a Chupacabra for all the real evidence there is of it. But John is hopeful, as he said: “Also forgot to mention, there has been 4 recent sightings on Virginia’s end of Delmarva, including one by a Dentist.”
Downstate Delawareans, like John, God bless ‘em. They’re the one’s that gave you all Christine O’Donnell.