(UPI) Reports of a mountain lion on the loose in Pennsylvania's Lehigh County were the result of a large house cat wandering through the area, officials said.

Thomas Keller, a biologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, visited Lower Macungie Township on Monday to investigate a reported mountain lion sighting that included photos snapped of the purported big cat.

Keller said a resident took the photos from her second-floor apartment window, about 90 yards away from the animal, and he used measuring tools and cardboard models to recreate the photos.

"Based on the photos taken using the cutout in comparison to the original photo, it appears that the animal in question was a large feral house cat," Keller told the Allentown Morning Call.

Keller used cut-outs in the size of house cats, mountain lions and bobcats, which are sometimes found in the area.

The biologist said the resident did the right thing by reporting the sighting.

"We will generally go out and try to talk with who reported it and get perspective on where the photo was taken," Keller told the Lehigh Valley News. "We look at original picture and measure what we can.

"We get a lot of these every year. We look at things in the picture that we can get scale from. It might look like a mountain lion, but we need to know what those measurements are to get the scale."

The last confirmed mountain lion in Pennsylvania was killed in Berks County in the 1870s, the Pennsylvania Game Commission said.

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