Big cat sightings - Do you believe in them or have you seen any?

[Unknown2020]

So I’m fully prepared I may get told I’m crazy...

I live rurally, think fields backing onto each other, forests etc..

One day a few years back I was driving down a quiet country lane and in the distance I saw something black creeping along in the field amongst the corn growing. I actually came to a stop in a little lay by and watched thinking maybe it was a lost dog (nothing else about for miles, and not a typical walking area) On further watching it was definitely not a dog, it was like a cat but much bigger/longer and with a long tail and it moved about like a cat.

I mentioned it to a family member at the time and they said they were sure many years ago of seeing a puma that ran across in front of there car. Again too big to be a cat/too big to be a dog but moved like a cat.

Has anyone else actually spotted anything like this in the UK?

westernwildlife.org/cougar-outreach-project/cougar-identification/
Info on cougars. With paw size

That's beautiful.
i wonder if it's got out of a secured garden without the owner knowing, dont know of many people who let Savannahs roam free like that.

That would be rather shocking to come across unexpectedly, but is utterly beautiful.

Adding this here because I've seen a big cat at Castle Eden too. I walk the dog there often (my 13 month old loves it too, craning his neck to look around us to take it all in) and what I saw was some time ago, walking on a track from the main cycle path to the car park on the a689. It just stood on the path in front of me, with its back to me. I remember first thinking it was a dog, then noticing the tail, the shoulders, the way it moved, small head. Definitely a big black cat the size of a labrador (at least), only thing that differed from the traditional 'black panther' pic posted on the last page was that its legs were quite long. A very strange creature indeed. I've never seen it again, although I always remember it every time I go there.

There's clearly something going on there, so many people (even on here!) seem to have seen the same thing.

My mum was a secretary at Chester Zoo many, many, many years ago and said that a lot of 'big' cats such as cougars got let into the wild when they brought in licenses for exotic pets.

Our evil cat had a lot of markings and behaviour in common with black footed cats en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-footed_cat and I don't suppose it's beyond possibility that some smaller exotic cats are roaming and have interbred either (I thought evil cat was just a kitten from a feral mother that was totally evil, but it made a good story)

Again - another Dog Person saying something the size of a Labrador.

My mum was a secretary at Chester Zoo many, many, many years ago and said that a lot of 'big' cats such as cougars got let into the wild when they brought in licenses for exotic pets.

This is called a FOAF. A 'friend of a friend story'. Hardly proof of anything. I heard a really dirty story about Sean Connery and Lulu from a friend in a pub once who swears that Sean Connery it told him it to his face. I didn't believe a word of that either - though my friend obviously did.

So many people claim to have seen these big cats, yet no one has ever found a dead or injured one.

Well, during lockdown I was out cycling with DH in the Yorkshire Dales and saw a huge cat come out of a hedge and cross the road about 6 metres ahead of us. I yelled at DH to look and said "what was that?!" to which he replied "a cat".

As we cycled closer (it had gone into a neighbouring field) I saw that he was right. It was just a normal cat, quite big, probably male. I had somehow tricked myself into thinking it was a "big cat" where in reality it was just a... big cat. 😂

So i do take "sightings" with a pinch of salt because sometimes our imaginations are more powerful than we realise.

I amazing how people can track and film the rarest of animals in the most remote and inhospitable places but no one can manage to get a half decent photo of an animal in the UK?

Having said that it's not unreasonable to think that there may have been a case or two where a larger wild cat has escaped or been released into the wild - so it's not totally impossible.

Reminds me of Father Ted.

www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/19057991.big-cat-stares-dogwalker-whitby-park-ellesmere-port/
More sightings recently including a footprint

I believe there are enough nutters out there trying to keep illegally imported bigs cats as pets so make at least some of the sightings plausible.

UK boarder force seized 8 between Jan and Apr 2013. I’m sure there are more stats out there if you google, that was the first result that came up.

According to another report 15 UK households are currently keeping them legally (with license) in domestic settings.

Lots of opportunities to illegally breed and sell them within the UK.

Semi-domesticated big cats would be a lot more likely to get spotted than truly wide ones, so a small number could generate a very large number of sightings.

I live on the edge of a heavily forested area. There is a real movement to ‘rewild’ it, including 2 applications, 1 failed and 1 pending for lynx (and wolves!) I wouldn’t be surprised if some hippy fringe group has tried to do it by stealth at some point.

On the subject of photos, if I walk my dog at twilight I am guaranteed to see at least 1 deer. Have I managed to get a photo of anything other than a speck or blur yet? Have I fuck! Even when I keep my phone in my hand with the intention of spotting one. The encounters feel long, but are actually over in seconds.

Exactly, these are elusive creatures and very difficult to get on camera.
That being said, I'm not sure about panthers in the UK but I'm sure there'll be hybrids of wild cat and lynx etc.. and I wouldn't be shocked to see something of that size.

I saw one, once, years ago when driving into Chester. Saw a huge black cat strolling around a field some distance away so stopped the car to gawp. Turns out it was in the jaguar enclosure at Chester Zoo, and it was safely behind a huge fence, also some distance away ...

As per my name, I could talk about this all day .
I would love to see a wild cat one day, not too close though.
I often go walking in the woods especially in lockdown but the only thing I've come across are rabbits and squirrels, I should be grateful I suppose.

I used to get that everytime I went on the train to the west of Reading past where the Child Beale Park kept their animals in fields. So you'd look up and see the usual fields of crops, then a few sheep, cows then something exotic you'd really not expect to see in a field in the middle of nowhere, then a few more crops and cows and then the Child Beale site. I always assumed that's that it was, perhaps someone did farm zebras or whatever it was outside Pangbourne in the early 1990s

www.bordercountiesadvertizer.co.uk/news/19109194.welsh-government-will-investigate-big-cat-sightings/

The first time these sightings are being taken seriously I think.

I was listening to Radio 4 a couple of days ago and there was a programme on this. The presenter had seen one in Herefordshire, and was speaking to an expert about it. Apparently the big cats have a particular way of moving that identifies them as different from other animals. They only go after sheep if there is nothing else, and they don't like sheep which have been dipped in chemicals, so will only eat organic sheep which haven't been dipped. Their natural prey is deer and smaller animals including pigeons. They have been sighted around Cleeve Hill in Gloucestershire, as well as many other places. No one knows quite how they got there, but many were let loose in the 70's when the laws were changed. How they found mates to breed with though is the thing I don't understand.

www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/wolf-seen-crossing-m5-lorry-5151938?fbclid=IwAR304f4aKMOtlIBe-2hKJsrYZ5Mm40bhH67rHYip5buIZ5mauh8mpJG6gFQ

Not big cat but in the same vein!