This
Dealing with a pissed off 20 lb feral tabby is risking serious injury, and that's with heavy gloves and a fair bit of experience under your belt. A full-grown mountain lion? Nope. No way you'd get off with a few facial cuts. Anyone who's experienced a house cat pretzelizing themselves around get at you with tooth and claw can attest to that. At the very least the guy would have had his arms and upper torso shredded to bits. More likely is brimic's "corpse hanging from a tree" scenario.
Brad
I agree that I'm not surprised that it wasn't a full grown Lion, as those things are pretty much Apex predators.
I would like to add one data point (or anecdote, if you will) to Brad's quote (and the other folks that said similar things).
I was actually attacked but a good sized feral cat when I was a teenager. Like 22 pounds of pissed off and mean. I've also had pet cats my entire life and have had to do the claw trimming, shove into crate, hold for meds, all that stuff. All that stuff you guys are thinking about on the cat pretzeling, and it's hard to avoid serious injury, and gloves and towels and the like is only true if you're trying not to hurt the cat.
The cat that attacked me? I was 17 and like 180 lbs. It got some real good scratches in, and like 3 bites in the first 30 sec of the attack, while I was trying to disengage from the angry beast. Then I decided that this cat was acting weird, and I was going to deliver it for rabies testing. After that the fight lasted about 15 sec. I was bleeding sure, but not actually injured in any real sense. (and the cat was negative for rabies, so there's that.)
An ~200lbs human is not going to be too troubled by a predator 1/10 their size unless the human is trying to be gentle, I don't care what the creature has for claws and teeth.
Much like fights with people, you gotta commit to the violence when it starts.
