Despite reading a Ministry of Natural Resources employee's assertion her horse was not attacked by a wild cat, she's sure it was.

She said she believes a jaguar attacked her thoroughbred horse a year ago in Cooks Mills, east of Welland.

In September 2007, her horse was attacked from behind in broad daylight at 4 in the afternoon. Spiece said she and her husband watched as their horse jumped the fence into a different paddock than where Spiece had left her and found the mare bleeding profusely.

"The marks left on her were five inches across and appeared to be claw marks," said Spiece. "Tell me how a coyote or a dog is going to get up on her back."

Spiece's horse is sixteen hands high, or about 5-foot 3-inches. The horse had deep wounds on her back and on her hind leg.

In a recent article in Niagara this Week about cougar sightings in the region, MNR biologist Anne Yagi said there was no evidence to suggest that a large cat had attacked the horse.

Spiece said she called someone from Zooz in Stevensville to have a look at it.

"At first I thought it was a hawk," said Spiece. "But she said no, no this isn't a hawk."

Spiece said the MNR had wanted to meet with her right away and when a female employee visited the property, she had chastised Spiece for leaving some foals in the paddocks outside.

Spiece said she was told by the employee that whatever had attacked her horse would be back.

Yagi said the MNR sent photographs of the horse's wounds to cougar experts and the experts did not concur that it was a large cat attack.

She said that the MNR set up cameras on Spiece's property, but that only returned images of domestic cats and Spiece's dogs.

"There's no supporting evidence to say that it was a large cat that attacked the horse," said Yagi.

She said the only scientific evidence they have ever obtained of a large cat presence in Niagara was scat gathered from the Wainfleet bog a long time ago. She also said they had gathered scat from Spiece's property, but it never turned up anything significant.

"We don't know what happened to that horse," said Yagi.

Spiece said she received some insight from Melissa Morabito, the director of The Exotic Animal Rescue Service (TEARS), who has worked with large cats for the last 12 years.

"When I've done some digging, I've gone back to 2001 that there has been sightings of a large black cat," said Morabito.

Morabito said that a large black cat would either be classified as a leopard or a jaguar. Panthers fall under the puma category. When they are born, they have spots, but they lose them around the age of six months and end up with a beige coat.

After the attack, Spiece noticed large paw prints around her Cope Road property every six weeks or so. She said the prints didn't belong to her St. Bernards.

Morabito said that the prints were different than that of the dogs, because dogs claws are always out where cats claws are retracted.

Both Spiece and Morabito believe that the animal had been kept as a pet and was either released into the wild or escaped.

Morabito said due to the lack of front claw marks on the horse, it was possible that the cat had its front claws removed.

There is presently no provincial or federal legislation against the ownership of exotic pets, though some municipalities have enacted bylaws.

Spiece has kept a log book since the first attack and said she received a picture from a Niagara Regional Police officer who took a photo of a large black cat on Farr Rd. as well as video footage from someone in Fort Erie of a large black cat slinking through the forest.

"That could be anything," said Yagi. "It's 500 yards away, it could be a domestic cat."