COUGAR BELIEVED HEADING FOR HILLS.

Byline: Amy Collins Daily News Staff Writer

Following two more cougar sightings in Tarzana, animal control officials said a big cat roaming the neighborhood appears to be returning to the mountains.

``I feel that particular cat is retreating back into the hills,'' said Dennis Kroeplin, the wildlife officer for the city of Los Angeles. ``That's where we want them, back in the hills.''

Janet Kerr Gumer saw the mountain lion Monday morning as she went to pick up her newspaper at 6:25 a.m. ``It looked just as scared to see me as I was to see it,'' she said. ``It didn't look in any way like it was going to attack.''

The cat was about 30 to 40 feet away from her in front of a neighbor's yard at the intersection of Pasadero Drive and Reyes Drive, she said. Gumer and the mountain lion slowly walked away from each other and she got in her car to call 911.

The latest sightings were near the Braemar Country Club, but progressively more south from the Wednesday sighting at Reseda Boulevard and Wells Drive in Tarzana.

On Monday and Saturday last week, the mountain lion was seen in the 18900 block of La Montana Place. On Monday, it was in the 18900 block of Pasadero Drive, Kroeplin said.

During the weekend sightings, the mountain lion appeared afraid of the humans, said Lt. Richard Felosky of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Regulation.

On Monday morning, animal control officials responded to a police call of a mountain lion in the 5800 block of Fairhaven Avenue in Woodland Hills, but that sighting could not be confirmed, Felosky said.

Even though the city is equipped to respond immediately to a report of a mountain lion, officials stand only about a one-in-100 chance of catching the cougar unless it's been cornered in a tree or on a roof, Felosky said.

``They're in a populated area too far to get out, so they take haven somewhere - a roof or a tree,'' Felosky said.

The number of sightings around the Valley recently - from Granada Hills and West Hills to Chatsworth and Woodland Hills - has elicited a number of false-alarm calls to animal control officials, including what proved to be raccoon tracks and dog prints, Kroeplin said.

``People are seeing things, and the first thing they have in the back of their mind, because of the media attention, is it must be a mountain lion,'' he said.