They got tired of tracking and trying to capture the cat... This was after
1 week! I remember reading a report many years ago about a black panther
which evaded capture for 3 months. They did not kill it but eventually
captured it by cornering it in a storm drain!
Here is a blurb about a liger...
From Wikipedia
The liger is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger. It is therefore a member of genus panthera. It looks like a giant lion, with diffused tiger stripes. Like tigers (and unlike lions), ligers like swimming.
A tigon is the cross between a male tiger and a female lion.
Known ligers exist due to human influence, either by deliberate human intervention, or by humans putting lions and tigers in enclosed spaces together. In natural conditions tigers and lions generally do not inhabit the same territory - the two species coexist in the wild today only in the Gir forest of India although their respective ranges used to intersect in Persia, China and perhaps also Beringia. Even where they do coexist, there have been no confirmed reports of interbreeding, though there are long-standing claims that this has happened.
Ligers grow much larger than tigers or lions. This is because female lions and male tigers transmit a growth-inhibiting gene to their descendants. Being the offspring of a male lion and female tiger, the liger does not have the growth-inhibiting gene and grows much more. They will grow constantly through their lifespan until their bodies cannot sustain their size anymore. picture
The liger featured in the photograph is called Hobbs and lives at Sierra Safari Zoo. He is the offspring of an African lion and a Bengal tigress. The staff say, "He roars like a lion and swims like a tiger. He's definitely all cat. He likes to play, and for all his incredible bulk he moves just as silently as any other cat." He is estimated to weigh about 450 kilograms (about 1000 pounds), about twice the average for male Siberian tigers, the largest non-extinct naturally occurring member of family Felidae.
Most ligers are sterile, but not all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
Very interesting reading...never seen one before 
