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I think I'd have to agree with you on the Puma being the most likely culprit. I've had my own run in with them in the Santa Cruz mountains. In fact, I came face to face with one less than a mile from where I lived.

I attended Santa Cruz High in the last half of the 70's (class of 80). The high school is nestled in a canyon. The thickly forested hills on three sides are criss-crossed with fire roads and trails. I used to hike them a lot as I lived near the school. In the summer, I would go up there and practice with my black-powder firearms.

One day I was on my way up to where I liked to shoot (an old stagnant pond). As I was walking up the fire-road to the pond a Puma dropped down into the road in front of me, from the uphill side. Don't know if it was a he or she, but it was quite large for a puma, and I guessed it weighed in the 400lb range.

So anyway, I'm standing there having a staring contest with a Puma about 20 feet in front of me. I have two fully loaded .44 caliber black powder revolvers on my hips. Both absolutely worthless, I was sure, as I wondered if I could skin leather and bust a cap before the cat was all over me. Fortunately, the cat decided I was not threat and continued on it's way after about 30 seconds of sizing me up (it seemed like a good hour to me at the time).

For over a year I had been seeing tracks up there, but everyone said that Mountain Lion were long gone from that part of California. Even though I had identified the tracks people refused to believe it. Years later I was not as surprised as everyone else seemed to be when mountain lion attacks started occuring in the mountains east of LA (remember the female jogger who became kitty-chow).

There were plenty of deer and and feral cats and dogs for them to feed on in the Santa Cruz mountains. That, and the lack of hunting, seems to have made them unafraid of people.

Even with a pair of revolvers, that cat scared the hell out of me. Though on reflection, if I hadn't had them, I may have been compelled to run which could have been fatal. So who knows.

BTW, when I was in the Army one of my friends had been stationed in Alaska and had hunted bear. He told me that the rangers there carried shot guns or large caliber pistols (.44 revolvers) loaded with snake shot in case they had to defend against bears. It was not meant to kill, but if charged, they would shoot the bear in the face, blinding them and damaging their sensitive noses - which would cause the bear such pain it would forget about trying to kill you long enough for you to get moving. I imagine that might work with a big cat as well. Most things tend to lose their fight when shot in the face.

For over a year I had been seeing tracks up there, but everyone said that Mountain Lion were long gone from that part of California.

I once owned a house on wooded acreage that backed up to 1000 acres of state land in Washington north of Seattle. There were trails through the woods in the back. I would go walking out there with my dogs and cats as company. Every time I came to a certain place, the animals would refuse to go any further, no matter how much I encouraged them. The dogs would stop, and one of the cats would scale a tree and meow at me.

I didn't think anything about it until one day I noticed a large paw print in a muddy area where there was a trickle of a natural spring. The paw print was as large as my hand -- much larger than my Golden Retriever could make. I avoided walking there unless I had better company with me than the house pets. My husband said I was nuts; the print was big just because it was muddy.

We moved away and the County bought the house and land to serve as an entrance to the State land which they subsequently converted into a wilderness park. You can imagine my chagrin when I visited my former homestead several years later and found posted warnings from the County: "BEWARE of PANTHERS when walking on these trails!"