Cougar killed on I-394 will become part of Minneapolis parks exhibit

A cougar that had quite the following as it roamed a Minneapolis neighborhood in 2023 until it was killed while crossing a freeway is having a homecoming of sorts Saturday.

Taxidermist Meadow Jean Kouffeld spent the better part of the past 16 months putting the 2-year-old male cougar back together at her home in Grand Rapids, Minn. She will present her work and speak during a reception from 10 a.m. to noon at Kenwood Community Center.

The center at 2101 W. Franklin Av. is not far from where the cougar was fatally struck in the early morning of Dec. 6, 2023, on Interstate 394.

“He was broken up pretty good with a lot of road rash, the skull broken and stomach ruptured,” said Kouffeld, who works as a wildlife biologist. “A cat is incredibly hard to do in taxidermy. It was one of my more challenging ones due to its size, and where it was going.”

Eventually, the animal will be part of an educational display at the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s Kroening Nature Center in North Mississippi Regional Park.

But first is Saturday’s unveiling.

Residents in the Lowry Hill neighborhood had watched intently and curiously for a few days in late 2023 — even posting home security videos showing the cat sauntering across driveways — rooting for a happy ending before getting the fateful news.

“A lot of people wanted a happier ending,” said Cam Winton, who lives near where the big cat had been seen and spearheaded the effort to have the animal preserved. Fundraising brought in nearly $12,000, and Winton got the blessing of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the park board to have the cat taxidermized.

“This was a sad situation, we are trying to make the best of it,” said Park Board Commissioner Elizabeth Shaffer. With this, “we get a chance to see wildlife we don’t often get to see in urban areas.”

Cougar sightings are rare in Minnesota, and even more so in the metro area.

From 2007 to 2025, there were 144 confirmed cougar sightings across the state, but that number may be fewer. Some of the cougars may have been detected multiple times from different locations on camera, inflating the number, said Dan Stark, a carnivore specialist with the DNR.

The most recent cougar sighting in the metro area was in February northeast of Hastings near the St. Croix River, Stark said. There have been a handful of others over the years.

The cougar hit on I-394 does not have a name, but it did have a tag on its ear engraved with “NE 132.” That allowed DNR officials to determine the cat wandered more than 600 miles from the Oglala National Grasslands in northeast Nebraska to Minneapolis.

Kouffeld said that it is unusual for a cougar to make a foray that long, which increases the odds of dying in a collision with a motor vehicle.

“With 4.2 million road miles in the United States, roadkill is a major risk for wildlife,” she said. “It’s a major source of mortality.”

Kouffeld surmised that abundant green space may have allowed the charismatic cat to find its way into the heart of the city. To illustrate the journey, the display shows the cougar wandering through grasses and plants.

Winton, who said it “was a bummer” when the cat was hit by a Hummer, added that Saturday’s celebration, complete with free Sebastian Joe’s ice cream, is the happy occasion many in the neighborhood wanted, and lets the cat live on.

“Generations of school kids will go to the museum and see this mountain lion and learn its story,” Winton said. “Residents will see the mountain lion and can appreciate what a beautiful animal it is.”