Mountain Lion Pet Store Catnip Story Revealed as Digital Fabrication

A widely circulated story claiming a mountain lion broke into a Colorado Springs pet store and indulged in catnip has been definitively debunked as false. The tale, which spread across social media platforms since September 2025, captured widespread attention with over 192,000 reactions on one Facebook post alone.

According to the fabricated narrative, employees at a Colorado pet store arrived one morning to find a mountain lion that had entered overnight and made itself at home in the cat toy aisle. The story described how the big cat supposedly ignored dog food and bird seed, heading straight for catnip products, where it reportedly tore open bags and rolled around in a state of feline euphoria until wildlife officers relocated it to nearby hills.

Despite its viral appeal, the story contains numerous red flags indicating fabrication. Most tellingly, no credible news outlets reported such an incident in Colorado Springs or anywhere else – an event that would certainly have generated significant local and national coverage had it actually occurred.

Digital forensic analysis of the images circulated with the story revealed further inconsistencies. The primary image purportedly showing the mountain lion appears to be digitally manipulated. The setting depicted is clearly a convenience store snack aisle rather than a pet store cat toy section as described in the narrative.

Researchers traced the background image to footage from a Canadian convenience store robbery that went viral previously. Side-by-side comparisons show identical product placement and store layout between the original footage and the manipulated mountain lion image, strongly suggesting digital alteration.

Timeline inconsistencies further undermine the claim. While the fabricated story features a timestamp of May 4, 2022, the earliest appearance of the narrative online dates to September 15, 2025, on a Facebook page called “StoryTime.” This three-year gap between the alleged incident and its first appearance online defies explanation and standard reporting patterns for unusual wildlife encounters.

The story appears to be part of a growing trend of what media literacy experts call “AI slop” – low-quality, artificially generated content designed primarily to drive engagement and ad revenue through clicks and shares. Wildlife encounters featuring animals in anthropomorphized or unusual situations have become a particularly common theme in this category of digital content.

Analysis of the distribution network behind the story reveals suspicious patterns. Despite focusing on a U.S.-based incident, one Facebook page sharing the content traced back to Tbilisi, Georgia. Meanwhile, a blog hosting an expanded version of the story contained Vietnamese language elements but listed a Phoenix, Arizona shopping plaza as its registration address – a location flagged in multiple online scam warnings.

The Facebook page “StoryTime,” which popularized the mountain lion narrative, has previously promoted other debunked content, including a false claim about an AI robot experiencing PTSD after encountering a lion. This establishes a pattern of sharing fabricated, engagement-driven content.

Wildlife experts note that while domestic cats often respond strongly to catnip, mountain lions and other large wild felines typically show little interest in the plant. This biological inconsistency represents yet another factual problem with the story.

The mountain lion catnip tale joins a growing collection of viral wildlife misinformation that spreads rapidly across social platforms, highlighting the ongoing challenge of distinguishing authentic nature encounters from digitally manipulated or entirely fabricated content designed primarily for audience engagement rather than factual reporting.