Tel Aviv - A 45-year-old Israeli man woke up in the middle of the night to find a leopard staring at him and dangling his cat between its teeth, Israeli newspapers reported Tuesday. But rather than fleeing, the man jumped onto the leopard, who let go of the cat, wrestled with it and held it down for some 20 minutes until help arrived in answer to his wife's frantic phone-calls.
The man, Arthur du Mosch, is from the southern Israeli town of Sderot, in the Negev desert, where the leopard, which veterinarians said looked weak, exhausted and famished, had been roaming around at night for the past two weeks, devouring three local cats and a dog.
"I open my eyes and I see a leopard growling in front of my bed, in the middle of the bedroom, while our cat is struggling in its mouth," du Mosch, a tour guide by profession, told the Yediot Ahronot daily.
"God apparently gives people strength in moments like this, plus I'm an army medic so I don't get excited in situations of crisis. I got up and leapt onto the leopard's back."
Photographs published in Israeli dailies, taken by the rangers who arrived at his home after receiving a telephone call from his wife, showed du Mosch in red pyjamas sitting on the edge of the bed and holding down the leopard.
The rangers advised Israelis not to follow Mosch's example. "It's better to move away and call for help," said Raviv Shapira, the head of southern Israel's nature reserves.
The leopard was tranquilized and, meanwhile, has been taken to a wildlife park, where it will be looked after until it has regained strength.
