What has been visiting my house?

The other night while we were sitting in the family room we heard the sound of metal against metal. Understand our family room has a door to the garage, which has a door to the back patio very near it. None of us knew what the sound could be. My son insisted he had brought inside the pot from the leftovers I had given him to give to the dog. I went to the patio door, a normal exterior door without a window. I turned on the light & paused, knowing I didn't really want to meet any wildlife at my back door. When I looked out I saw the pot with the spoon on the cement beside it. I thought "Of course that's what made the noise, something knocking the spoon out of the pot." Since the patio was empty of life, I looked to the back yard, into the dimness beyond the lights. I did see something four legged running away past the far buildings heading for the trees beyond. It was very difficult to gauge the size of the animal I saw. It moved like a cat though I thought it might be as large as a medium size dog or as small as a house cat. Friends have told me it could have been a fox, as we have them in the area.

These pictures were taken several days after the incident. My daughter came to me in the morning after it snowed telling me I must come see the tracks she had found. These were found on the same back patio which is surrounded by a three foot fence, originally placed to keep our three rams, now deceased, from drooling all over our patio, but that's another story. My daughter was convinced that these are the prints of the animal I saw.

I think these are cat prints. The tracks trail around the patio past the side of the garage through the gate around to the front, across the front of the garage, on the front walk up the front porch & back crossing some rabbit tracks in the driveway & then down the driveway to the street. According to my daughter there were other tracks in the back yard, but I was to lazy to go out into the snow to see them. Besides I want to think we only have ordinary wild life in the yard.

Given the darkness, & the late hour, the mind makes up explanations to fit the 'evidence'. A cat expands into a beast.