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?

@geepipe
Up until mid 80s it could be quite believable but those cats released in 70s would have died out, then could they manage wild after being kept in captivity?
Working in dog rescue we often search for lost dogs too, it’s quite common to set up
a trail camera if we are monitoring a feeding station, also use drones, why has no sighting been followed up by doing this?
Nowadays genuine sightings could easily be proved/disproved.

www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/big-cat-lion-gloucestershire-2018-954738
Maine coons don't growl and follow you!

What always puzzles me about these photos - like this one from the article linked to above is why, when the large 'Labrador-sized' beastie has run off. Don't the photographers place something of a known and measurable size exactly where the beastie was (they have a digital photo to refer to after all) and take ANOTHER photo from the same spot against which the original can be measured? Funny no one ever thinks to do that.

In another picture from the same article two pictures are combined. We are told, "The cat was scaled by a superimposed picture of a fox on from the same camera". A fixed camera. Surely just going and standing where the cat was seen and holding a surveying pole there would have been a better way of scaling the thing than trying to eyeball it from a close up view of a fox's arse.

Trying to scale something like that is pointless - unless you know a lot about the lens used and the distance from the subject. Lenses distort. Different lenses with different focal lengths distort in different ways. I'm not a photographer but I've watched enough films with a critical eye to know that.

For example look at picture 3:

Look at those flower pots! They look huge in the 100mm lens, in a shot that was taken further away from them than the 15mm lens used in the image on the left. They were further away from the camera but look bigger. Pity there wasn't a tabby sneaking behind one of them or we'd have another mystery panther shot to add to the catalogue.

And you do have to wonder at the sloppy reporting.

"These are five of the most significant sightings in our county in 2017:

"September: A group of seven people out for a walk said they were stalked by a growling big cat for more than a mile. They claimed the panther-like creature followed them from Woodchester Park boathouse near Nailsworth to the car park after they got lost.
“I’ve seen the big black panther, it was as clear as day,”

The link that follows this links to an article in the same site in August. So it can't have happened in September. Later in the article the incident apparently happened 'in July'. Ok, the linked to article was dated 2nd August so the 'incident' probably did happen in July but it's pretty shonky reporting not checking a source you were actually linking to in the same sentence! (especially as the source was written by the same reporter) and then quote someone else as saying happened two months earlier.

And how anyone could be credible describing something as seen as "clear as day" when lost in woods at night. It's pretty dark in Gloucester at 10:45 even in July especially when then we are told, "They tried to take a picture of the animal but it was too dark."

"At that point we got scared and ran to the cars and put the lights on. [11pm] There it was, right in front of us. It jumped over the fence into the long grass where it seemed to be stalking us, growling.”

I wonder if they turned their car engines on to get the lights to work. That might explain the growling.

Yes, but at the time I lived in Sutton Coldfield. People always think this is totally made up.
It was a warm summers day. I was going to sunbathe in the back garden. As I got to the door, I saw a big cat walking towards me down the middle of the garden. It was fawnish, the size of a big dog but as others described, longer and with short ears and a tail. I made a noise and it stopped for a few seconds then disappeared back down the garden and over the fence.

@dreaming
Did you look up to find pictures of possible comparable cats?

m.facebook.com/bigcatcameratrapping/
The first cat is HUGE!

www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/large-wildcat-spotted-cambridge-actually-18083813
Also update on Cambridge cat. It's a moggy called Guffman

Gosh Dreaming, I live in Sutton Coldfield now...whereabout was this? Near the park? I walk the dog in there regularly and often wonder if there is something watching me from the woods!

@TheSandman - I came on to mention the puma/ginger cat but I see you got there first 😂

Ridiculous. If the woman who took the picture really saw a ginger cat with a pigeon as a puma with a grey cat she’s either nuts or she needs her eyes tested.

Guffman takes his name from an unfortunate farting habit he developed as a kitten, Sid explained, adding "when he farted he could make your eyes well up"

Poor cat. First he gets ridiculed for not being a lynx then his unfortunate digestive issues are published in the paper.

Fascinating

I was thinking about this last night. Quite a lot of the reports of these things are from people walking their dogs or more often than not described as being 'the size of a Labrado'r'.

Almost every report compares them to Labradors. It's the standard way of describing these things. I'm not a 'dog person'. I never have had a dog. I don't like them. Big ones small ones, I don't get on with them. I have no idea how big 'a fully grown Labrador' actually is. A dog wouldn't be the first thing that would spring to my mind when making a size comparison. I do have, and have always liked, cats. I know it's a generalisation but most people fall into one or other camp. Cat people or dog people. (There are exceptions - the owners of Guffman obviously keep both. And there are some people who don't like or care about either.)

But just as I, a cat person can't visualise the size of a dog it made me wonder if a cat person, more used to looking at and seeing cats, would be more likely to see a strange critter under less than ideal viewing conditions as a cat-sized thing - while a dog person would see it as a dog-sized thing.

It would be interesting to ask all those who report such things whether they considered themselves 'dog people' or 'cat people'.

Yes! I saw what looked like a black puma in Wiltshire in the 1990s. I was on a bike ride, stopped by a hedge and heard it - it was just on the other side of the hedge and was much bigger than a domestic cat. I was actually quite scared as it was so close. This was pre-mobile phones so I couldn't take a picture and of course nobody believed me!

www.facebook.com/199098633470668/posts/6998104370236693/

Ipadipod I just saw that on Facebook too

Years ago when walking through a forest near my home, I was somewhat bewildered to see a man walking a very small black cat on a lead. It was only as I got closer that I realised it was not a small black cat at all. In fact it was an enormous panther, at least five foot high at the shoulders. What threw my judgment I later realised was that it was in fact an adult male sasquatch walking the cat and not an average male human. Had I understood these scales to begin with I would scarcely have given another glance.

Maine coons don't growl and follow you!

Mine does when she sees people or animals she doesn't like.

I saw this & it reminded me of this thread

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8213527/amp/Cambridge-University-worker-pictures-big-wildcat-size-Labrador-roaming-garden.html

Read upthread @tontie That Cambridge 'Labrador sized' moggie is called Guffman and it's a neighbours pet.

DB saw one in 1982. My dad trapped it and it was a massive fox which had a strange shaped head and neck.

I personally haven't seen one, but there is no way I'd mistake a Maine coone for one. Our neighbours Maine coone used to sunbathe in our garden and I just saw him as slightly bigger than the rest of her (many) cats. I called him Timmy Mallet , thats why I've only put things on here that are massive, like the video, or that have been confirmed by professionals

I do think this is interesting.

I think there are probably some big cats out there. They may be ones released from captivity, or they may be the offspring of those. I have no idea, but it is unlikely that all the sightings, going back centuries, are all wrong.

BUT, I think people are very bad at estimating size, and that perspective can be a strange thing. We look out over a field, and regularly see foxes on the field. When the fox is at the far size, it is against the hedge/bushes over there. We know how big the fox is.
Occasionally I see a domestic cat in the same place. It is quite shocking how big some cats look. They easily look the same size as the fox. When I see a cat that looks 'too big' I often stop and watch it in surprise. It walks along past another bush or two, and suddenly it looks the right size. It is to do with the perspective of the animal and the bushes. There are a couple of bushes set further back, that is not obvious from where I am, but it makes the cat look bigger.

The internet is full of such optical illusions. I htink many of the sightings fall into that category.

thats why I've only put things on here that are massive, like the video, or that have been confirmed by professionals

Even when the sighting has been thoroughly debunked?

stratfordobserver.co.uk/news/exclusive-great-alne-big-cat-mystery-solved-by-the-observer/?fbclid=IwAR23tB3L0gpnpCFL67oEOeFdX0V0YWTwS-QmAtr35BJTyz6pHaL-2SCje5g

And turned out not to be massive at all.

Here's a person and a couple of ubiquitous Labradors standing at the same location.

stratfordobserver.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/IMG_4614.jpg

I once saw a huge, unusually marked cat stalking across an expanse of grass, like something out of a David Attenborough documentary. It was totally unlike any domestic moggie ever.

I felt so scared. But I didn't believe my eyes, so I went all the way over the other side of the field, and fortunately it stayed around for me to take a closer look. It was a cat. An ordinary cat.

I know what I saw: a big cat stalking across a field. It genuinely seemed just like that. I also know that it wasn't true.

That said, I do think there were genuine sightings post-1976 and the new legislation regarding exotic pets. But 40 years later, they will have died.