Mountain Lion wanders into home and kills family's pet cat

'Please keep ground-level doors and windows closed,' police tweet afterwards. 'This is also good advice for bears and burglars'

A mountain lion in the Boulder, Colorado, home of Kayla Slaughter (Twitter / Boulder Police Department)

A woman in Colorado has been left devastated after returning home to discover a mountain lion had eaten her pet cat.

Kayla Slaughter said the wild animal had probably got in through an open window at her house in the town of Boulder.

“There was a mountain lion standing in our living room,” she told CBS Local news, before describing her cat, named Klondike. “I got her my junior year of college. She’s been with me for 10 years.”

The lion stayed in the house for more than an hour as police and animal control officers stayed back for fear of their own safety.

Next door neighbour, Jessie Frankel, captured the animal exploring upstairs at the property.

She said: “When the cops came to the door and said, ‘There was a report of a mountain lion in your neighbour’s house,’ I thought, ‘What are you talking about?’ It seemed very odd and just unusual.”

And she added: “There is a bathroom upstairs and a window, I saw its ears and its face popped up and then it was there for a few seconds. They [the police] were shooting these little bean bags and I think trying to scare it out of the upper level and downstairs.”

The cat escaped the house without any apparent injury following the non-lethal shots.

Following the incident last Thursday, Boulder Police Department took to Twitter to urge local residents to keep all ground-level doors and windows closed as a barrier to unwelcome wildlife.

“Please keep ground-level doors and windows closed and locked at night and when you are not home,” it tweeted. “This is also good advice for bears and burglars.”

Just last month, an Oregon woman came home to find that a mountain lion was napping for six or more hours behind her sofa.