Fascinating stuff, and three times in one month is significant - that's not a coincidence or a trick of the light. I'm based over in Glastonbury so I can't compare notes on the Ozarks specifically, but we get big cat reports fairly regularly around Somerset and the levels, and the pattern always seems to be the same. Multiple sightings clustered in a short time frame, always near woodland edges or farmland borders.
Have you managed to get any footage or even just a decent look at the size of it? People always say "big" but are we talking larger than a labrador or genuinely puma-sized? That distinction matters a lot when it comes to working out what we're actually dealing with.
Also worth asking - are there any livestock farms nearby? In every credible British big cat case I've looked into, the sightings almost always cluster around areas where theres easy prey. Would love to hear more detail from anyone else in that region who's clocked something similar.