Our largest North American cat has many names. Cougar, Mountain lion, puma. A name used less often is Cat-a-mount. It is an abbreviation of the Middle English cat of the mountaine, which refers to a wild cat.

In this painting I wanted to break one of the cardinal rules of painting. Never lead a viewer's eyes out of the painting. By balancing his glance to the lower left with background landscape in the upper right, I think a more interesting composition was created.