ORIGINAL: Hoopy
Maybe as big as a fox, but LOOKED like a cat with a very long skinny tail...
very bushy fur, and RED and BROWN striped....
They looked like a red and brown zebra.
making like, yelping noises?
This description dismisses the ringtail cat and the coatamundi...
I have no idea what it is, but your description almost sounds like a Tasmanian Devil (but they are extinct and were never on this continent)
I would be inclined to agree with David that they are some escapees..how long have they been in the wild though is hard to say..
We had a guy back home in NOVA who swore up and down he killed a 400 pound whitetail doe...weighed it and everything..we laughed about it for a couple weeks until he brought a pic in..it was a cow ELK! [:-]After some research they Apparently found out that a decade or so before that a local farmer had a small herd of Elk for whatever reason, and some or all escaped...this Elk had been milling around in the woods for many years, and the coloration was darker than a normal western elk..it damn near looked like a doe whitetail...
Kinda boggles the mind and makes me sad when I get to thinking that the eastern mountains used to be filled with Elk a few hundred years ago...
wierd $hit happens...