What has caused this?

There is a mound of dirt in my yard.  It looks like an animal dug a hole, but there isn’t a hole.  I leveled it once.  Now it is back. I’m a bit puzzled.

My daughter put out a "bait pile" on a 12" wide oval plate again last night.  

Crawdaddy's black cat showed up again early this morning.  It's a real big one.  It even has the white spot on the neck that he described.  

The "woodpecker" pic in bird thread is a photo-shop job.

Dang… that cat really gets around!  I still want to know what Susp need thinks of that woodpecker picture in the birds thread…

I thought I would try and scale the size of the cat in my pics.  The plate I put the pizza slices on is a 12" long oval plate (see pic).

Using the 12" plate size in the photograph, the cat's body length scaled up to around 24" (without accounting for the fact the cat is just slightly closer to the camera than the plate).  If I take the depth perception into account, the cat in my yard still had a body length (not including tail) of 20+ inches.....a big cat.

I still believe crawdaddy's cat and the cat in my backyard are the same animal    

Have not seen the cat again.  And , yes, it had to be a cat.  Have still not seen anything come out of the hole or be around the pile of dirt.

Or...you could set out some leftover pizza like I did last night.  2 slices of pepperoni on a paper plate and one of the neighborhood cats ate most of it.  A large raccoon stopped by and then a possum finished off the last piece of crust.

Set out some catnip near your cam,if it’s still around it’ll respond to the nip.    CARPIO 

And, in the first place, our WDNR has told us for years that there are no cougars in Wisconsin.  None.  Zero.  Zip.  NADA.  I for one believe them - why would they lie to us?  Bwahahahaha!  Nevermind the photos and live sightings of cougars, and the convoy of black DNR vans with radio telemetry dishes running around out here in the country.  Listening for what?  Oh yeah, collared deer, that's it.  Hahahaha!  That said, my opinion on the pic in question is a large common house cat - perhaps a feral one, in which case a .22 caliber headache is in order.  I wouldn't let the trash pandas off the hook either.  That's just me though.

I would have to say a large domestic cat. I have two male cats that have man coon in them and both are very large. One goes 23 lbs and the other goes 22 lbs. Neither one is fat , just big.

Not me on the juvenile mountain lion.  Can’t be one. I agree with Suspended … tail ratio and size isn’t right. If it is a feline, it is a domestic cat, a very big domestic cat. Over 2 feet long and about 14” tall.

I go with the juvenile mountain lion theory. 

My marriage baggage came with cat affiliation. Turned out fine. I've been domesticated for cat awareness. IMO, the tail on that cat in pic seems very stout. Almost lion/tiger like. Just doesn't seem domestic-like type of feline. 

Still no activity from the hole or on the lawn disturbance.  Had opossum last night.  

I can go along with domestic cat under bird feeder, but that is one big cat.  My adult cats are 14-15” long from neck to start of tail.   The one in picture is 26-28” long based on putting stakes in ground to mark neck to hind end then measuring with tape. Wish it came through either an hour earlier or later.  Pics would have been much clearer.

Did we solve the large dirt pile disturbance?   Large scale litter box? 

I've got coons running around our property like chipmunks, never seen a ground disturbance from them like that. Skunks, coons and possums seem to only dig small grub search holes from my experiences.  I've seen wood chucks throw dirt 4-5ft digging holes.  Did we determine how far away the dirt pile and ground hole are apart?