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?

I'm aware of that. I meant more that it was confirmed as a big cat by the RSPCA.

I saw this, this morning and thought of this thread
www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/wildcat-spotted-cambridge-fen-tiger-18078609
I've spent ages staring at the photo!

So glad no-one has posted this yet!

Dp and I went for a night time walk in the countryside once and saw some big eyes. I said 'it's a fox' he sai 'foxes eyes aren't like that, that's a very big cat'. Then we legged it asap . In hindsight it was probably just a big domestic cat, but you can't be too careful!

www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/wildcat-spotted-cambridge-fen-tiger-18078609

Was just about to come on and post the same link, now that is definitely not a pet cat! Look at the tail and the shape of its face

OFFS!

Look at the size of that shed roof. Now look at the size of the bricks on the front wall.

British House Bricks are usually about 225 mm long - add 10mm for the joints between them. That roof is approx 10 bricks long (A bit of guestimating across the doorway.) That makes the whole length of the roof less that 2.5 meters. Assuming that the shed is not sliding into some strange trans-dimentional non euclidean universe - it is rectangular and, as the animal is sitting towards the back of the roof, any measurements we take from the front can be scaled to the back

The average height of an adult Labrador retriever is about 540-580 mm at the shoulder - so roughly a fifth of the length of the roof.

Which means that that animal is no way as big as 'a fully grown Labrador dog'.

Dp and I went for a night time walk in the countryside once and saw some big eyes

What colour were they?

It's not the big ones we need to worry about. The feral tabbies are shagging the Scottish Wildcat to genetic extinction.

Correction! I misread my source.

www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Brick_sizes#Standard_bricks

I added 10mm for joints when:

"225 mm x 112.5 mm x 75 mm (length x depth x height). This includes 10 mm mortar joints, and so the standard size for a brick itself is 215 mm x 102.5 mm x 65 mm (length x depth x height)."

So that building's roof and, therefore, the animal on it are even smaller than I thought.

Look at it again with the background blurred. (I haven't touched the cat or the roof) and the brickwork scaled across the rooftop. (Roughly, I didn't allow for the over-hang of the roof towards the viewer when doing the verticals on the brickwork.)

It looks like a domestic moggy to me.

Like I said earlier in this thread. People are really great at seeing things but not good at looking at them. This one was actually sitting on top of a rule and it still initially looked (to me too) like a large animal. But once you start LOOKing at the thing...

Bear in mind some pet cats like Maine Coons are huge for domestic cats and would probably give a few folk a fright.

I won't believe it until someone takes a good photo of one on a phone that I'd say 98% of the population has.

That is a standard sized male cat on a very small shed and an article written by a journalist with a huge imagination for an audience with a large propensity to lap this rubbish up. Pays the bills I suppose.

@TheSandman I bet you're fun at parties. 🙄🙄🤨😂

Sandman
That’s very well done, think it needs done with a lot of the sightings.

Sandman
That’s very well done, think it needs done with a lot of the sightings.

Thank you, but it really needs to be done by the 'journalists' who publish the bloody stupid pictures in the first place.

I do believe older sightings could have been genuine, those cats released in the mid 70s, even if young would’ve died quickly if unable to adapt from captivity or if they survived, the life expectancy is 15 years tops.
Even Scottish wildcats are limited numbers, though many are believed to have bred with pet cats, they still only get to about two feet long so not huge either.

Yes, looking at your picture I assume that blue thing is the shed door, so that is definitely a normal size cat 😂

Am i being dim but that photo is a normal tabby? Even potentially a bengal but a normal sized pet cat on a small looking shed.

Am i being dim but that photo is a normal tabby? Even potentially a bengal but a normal sized pet cat on a small looking shed.

That's what it appears to me too. But if the observer had assumed the animal was on the ground, behind the shed (I blurred the foreground here) It would have looked like the size he described. A cat the size of a fully grown Labrador. I guess that's where he 'saw it' as being because he says he thought it was hunting rabbits, and the last time I looked rabbits don't live on shed roofs.

Christ I'm bored.

Haha i love this sort of thing because you discover some interesting er "proof". What i want to know is why theres not rain proof cameras set up hidden in some areas with high reported sightings and traps set to see if one can be found.

That photo is deffo a normal domestic cat. If they thought it was on the ground behind the shed then the perspective is all wrong. It seems so off.

When I was a kid on holiday in Devon I saw an enormous black panther type thing in a field. It absolutely wasn't a domestic cat. No one ever believed me though.

Haha i love this sort of thing because you discover some interesting er "proof". What i want to know is why theres not rain proof cameras set up hidden in some areas with high reported sightings and traps set to see if one can be found.

Better still with a piece of bait meat stuck next to rule on the ground so we can easily measure whatever takes the bait. Simple. But no big cat 'researcher' is going to do that because it won't produce any evidence to support their their belief that the woods are full of large feline predators. (Though the lack of any sightings would, in the usual way of the woo, be proof to them that the animals are there being very elusive. There's nothing quite like the total absence of evidence to convince a believer they are right.)

The sad thing is @TheSandman is i want to believe there are big cats hiding in the uk but with lack of evidence i can't believe it.

Not that I am suggesting in anyway people are lying. I do fully believe people have seen things but as its been said upthread maybe its been maine coons or other animals especially as a lot of reports seem to be at night and out of the blue so no one id expecting to see anything.