british big cats - your views

[grebo247365]

A while back there was a big ABC flap in the local media where I live in north east lincolnshire, several folk claimed spotting a large black felid in the surrounding villages, I was sceptical until my uncle informed me he too had seen a large cat the size of a police dog.
Several years earlier whilst driving out of town early one morning he had spied the beast slinking across a quiet country road! he never told the media and is not known for a fertile imagination or sense of humour (believe you me!)
Also I have second hand evidence big cats continue to be kept as pets in this country, a mate of mine I studied animal care with at college told me he had seen a puma on his travels, apparently someone he knew was keeping it in a enclosure in his backyard!

 

[Magentus]

We've had 2 sightings in our family; 1st a couple of years ago where we lived near Malvern, there is a walk up to a hill called Windy Oak in Storridge with a 360 view and my wife and her friend saw a long low black catlike animal in a nearby field.

2nd was a couple of weeks ago. We were on our way to Oxford from Worcester on the train. We always play the Horse game, where you say 'Horse' when you see a horse, and get a point. Just coming out of Charbury station, my daughter and I spotted something at the same time, went to say 'Horse' first, but realised it definately wasn't a horse. We both said 'Panther'!. It was black, large and looked like a cat. It was about 10 metres from the train in a wooded area by a stream and we both clearly saw it and independantly thought it was a big cat.

Magentus

 

[adderrustler]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/4830320.stm

so that makes you the tooth fairy - you still owe me 5p for the last one i left out!

well i looked, and reading between the lines they could not even get the place right where it came from, if you shot a linx in a field you would remember which field, it was probally shot after it was stuffed as a hoax, either that or it could have been an unreported escape from nearby Banham Zoo ! to many variables.
and any body who hunts knows that if a strange creature? is killing sheep you sit and wait because it will return to area to eat again thats how you trap and kill foxes just a few observations but nice post anyway.

 

[Purdy Bear]

I wonder how many of these big cat sightings are infact Maincoons! They are huge domesticated cats, some as big as a medium sized dog.

I knew someone with a Giant Maincoon and he was huge.

Someone in my area reported seeing a Linx in our local Cemetry, it was infact the local grey maincoon, with her kitten.

 

[zorro]

There was a huge great feral black tom cat on a farm just up the road from where I used to live, biggest one I've ever seen.

I used to love watching it hunt, it would run up the phone pole half way up the farm drive and sit on top from where it could look down into the corn field and spot any movement.

One day I saw it walking up the driveway, it had a full grown rabbit by the neck and it's body was hanging between the cats front legs, the rabbits back end dragging on the floor under the cats chest.

It looked like a lion dragging a young antelope back to its den, all rippling muscles and attitude.

I reckon he fathered most of the cats in our village while he was in his prime, never saw another tom try to take him on, and the dogs all gave him a wide berth.

 

[m.durston]

i think all the evidence out there does suggest that there are big cats living in the english countryside.
the fact that they are hardly seen just goes to show what elusive creatures they really are.
look at the snow leopard for example, i cant remember the exact facts but a documentary featuring them took something like 2 years to complete due to the elusiveness of the animal.
i can remember going to visit my mate about ten years ago in south mimms and being turned back by a police roadblock. it turned out that around 3 seperate sightings of a big cat in the local woods had been reported in the space of a few hours.
apparently one of the sightings was a dog walker and the poor womans dog was crapping itself at something lurking in the bushes. when the dog walker investigated she saw a big cat slinking away in the distance.
nothing was ever found but i think a few tell tale footprints may have been seen, i'm not sure as it was a few years ago.
all the woodland that we have in hertfordshire could definitely hide a big cat and the various wildlife munjac deer etc could sustain a lone big cat for years.
also in response to grebo's post about big cats being illegally kept as pets, wasnt there a bloke that got caught trying to sell a tiger cub from the back of a van in a motorway services?

 

[thewanderer]

there have been arrest made where certain people have been aquiring large felines keeping them in crappy sheds not feeeding them or allowing them exercise so that at a point when the cat is weak etc its is released for people who pay to hunt. should a cat escape it would not be reported and if it was to survive in the wild well plenty of deer rabbits for a lynx to eat
evidence of this was two lynx were found by rspca in a shed on a farm after a tip off.

 

[Tengu]

Cetainly I have heard of this happening but is it just an isolated incident?

Just what do the rspca logs look like concerning wildcats?

 

[wildman695]

And no ones ever shot or captured one even though so many are seen, amazing I suppose they hide with the Trolls, vampires and werewolves and come out when theres no guns or cameras about.

No quite true, a woman who saw a puma regularly around Lock Lomond did manage to caputure it, it was kept in a zoo until it died, so yes they are out there. The Surrey puma was recorded for years with sightings every year. however it is now some 40 years since any releases due to the dangerous wild animals act. Very few if any have bred in the wild so the chances are they are fast disappearing. My Zoo contacts have internal lists of a few escapes that are naturally kept quiet. Here in Devon there are regular sightings around the Combe martin area, atracted maybe by the captive females calling, who knows.

 

[cameronwillowanne]

Freind of mine had a large cat jump in front of her car in Aberdeenshire.She spent two years studying puma in Patagonia as a zooologist so a reliable witness. Another freind who has spent most of his life as a game ranger in Africa went out to look for sign after the sighting we found tracks in the snow which she confirmed as puma. He had never seen puma tracks (not native to Africa) but put the animal between a large leopard and young female lion in size. These animals are incredibly shy of human contact people spend years trying to get a glimpse of one in their native habitat without sucess. Try spotting a native Scottish wildcat in the wild and you can get some idea of how elusive these animals are.

 

[louis_last]

That year one of our fellow fishermen also swore he saw a large black puma like cat at Loch Tay.

One of my mates has a cottage on the shores of loch tay, him and another of my friends SWEAR blind that they saw a panther on the shores of the loch one time when they were up there. I'm always trying to tell them it was just a labrador but they are adamant.

 

[Hugo]

There's some bloke in Woben that swears there are lots of big cats on his land.

 

[TylerD]

Myself, SWMBO and our two girls were walking the dog in our local woods. It was about half six in the evening when we heard a repeated and loud roaring noise, the girls were a little scared, the dogs ears pricked up and she froze in her tracks.
I laughed this off as us being near Paradise Wildlife Park, told the kids not to worry and joked to the misses about being curious as to how many lions, tigers and leopards etc had "gone over the fence".
Now after reading this thread and remembering said event, it occurs to me that the wildlife park is a good mile and a half/ two miles from where we walk the dog. Can a big cat's call travel that far?

 

[pango]

A mate of mine manages a nature reserve outside Kinghorn in Fife. About a year ago he told me that one of the staff had reported seeing a big cat and that a few weeks later it was seen by two people. I've met some of the people who work there and they're not the fanciful sort.

A couple of years ago I was out in the vicinity of Norman's Law when I spotted a creature moving across the corner of a field towards the line of a hedge. When it reached the hedge it cut straight through a gap and followed the other side of the hedge, suggesting it knew its way around. It stopped and seemed to simply vanish.

I made my way over to the hedge but there was no sign of it as I approached to try to spot any tracks it might have left. I then had this awful feeling that I was standing at the very spot where I'd lost sight of it, having no idea of its direction of travel or location. Suddenly, the novelty of finding tracks no longer interested me and I retreated the way I'd come but with the hackles standing on the back of my neck. I just knew it was watching me!

What I saw was a "black lab" type thing, but long and low with its tail touching the ground behind it. It was no black lab!

I believe the sightings of such things rose dramatically after Thatcher's Gov't introduced the Dangerous Animals Bill. Proving true their belief that there were too many irresponsible owners!

 

[JonathanD]

I'd love to go to one of these areas and have a go at tracking.

 

[locum76]

Can a big cat's call travel that far?

Big cats have a huge range, apparently a panther has a range of 40 square miles. I reckon our normal domestic cats on the farm range up to a kilometre from the barn.

EDIT: I misread your post. :togo:

 

[FerlasDave]

I'd love to go to one of these areas and have a go at tracking.

Me too. we should get over cannock chase one of the days and have a look around there for their legendary big cat.

 

[JonathanD]

Me too. we should get over cannock chase one of the days and have a look around there for their legendary big cat.

I thought that was a werewolf. I draw the line at werewolves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/stoke/content/articles/2009/09/29/werewolves_in_staffs_feature.shtml

 

[FerlasDave]

I thought that was a werewolf. I draw the line at werewolves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/stoke/content/articles/2009/09/29/werewolves_in_staffs_feature.shtml

Even better!

 

[JonathanD]

Even better!

Daytime, when there is no full moon that week. Not that I'm scared or owt.