I live in northeastern Connecticut. I’ve seen lots of deer, bobcats and coyotes and a few bears but my biggest surprise was a mountain lion. I called the CT DEP and they wouldn’t even take the report telling me I must have seen a bobcat. I well know the difference. I went online and saw four other people within a fifteen mile radius reporting a mountain lion that same weekend and they got the same response from DEP.
There are mountain lions in Connecticut. Probably near where you live too.
There was the mountain lion that got killed on the Merit Parkway on Greenwich about 5 or 6 years ago.
Fish & Game said that came all the way from the SD. They matched its DNA from lions in the Badlands.