By Mary O’KEEFE

The Dept. of Fish and Game, with Glendale police and fire, responded to a home in the 3300 block of Thelma Street on Thursday afternoon when it was reported that a mountain lion found a shady spot to take a nap.

“We started getting calls as early as 6 a.m. [Thursday],” said Lt. Bruce Fox, GPD.

At about 1:30 p.m., a call came in from a resident that the cat was in a neighbor’s backyard. Police responded and called Fish and Game. Officers went door to door asking residents to stay inside until the mountain lion was tranquilized.

As the police were waiting for Fish and Game to arrive, and with helicopters circling overhead, several neighbors and community members came by to see what was going on.

Marty Wall from Fish and Game arrived and was able to shoot the mountain lion with a tranquilizer. The cat was not immediately knocked out, however. He jumped over the fence out of the backyard of the Thelma Street home to the backyard of an adjacent Fairmount Avenue home.

Officials walked up to Fairmount Avenue, joined by an ever-growing crowd. At first it was not clear what property the mountain lion had taken refuge, but it was soon discovered the cat had crawled under a wooden patio deck of a home at the corner of New York Avenue.

Wall crawled under the patio and shot more tranquilizers into the mountain lion. Then it was up to the Glendale firefighters to crawl under the patio and pull the 150-pound mountain lion out and help carry it to the waiting Fish and Game truck.

The public and paparazzi closely followed the officers as they made their way to the truck with the sleeping cat. Although seeing a mountain lion is not that unusual in the area, having it remain in the neighborhood throughout the day caught everyone’s interest. The crowd murmured “ahh” in unison as the drugged mountain lion was loaded into the truck.

The cat was tagged and transported into the Angeles National Forest.