Big cats in the wild. (Uk)

[Soubriquet]

Do you believe there may be big cats living and surviving in the wild?

I’ve always thought that maybe there could be some, but they would be incredibly secretive. And most photos people took was obviously a moggy out on its walk.

However, Saturday, I saw a big black cat in a field across from my house. It was too big to be a moggy. Honestly it was huge. I wasn’t able to get a picture this time but I’m determined to get one next time

What do you think? Big cats in the wild?
Myth or fact?

I believe there are a few loose big cats in the U.K. I think people would be surprised at some of the exotic wild animal populations in the U.K. I know there’s groups of wallabies, coaties, skunks and copyus amongst other things that have either escaped or been purposely introduced to the U.K, and they’ve settled here successfully. Most people have come across the massive parakeet population in London. I don’t think it’s too out there to imagine that there could be a few escaped big cats

I knew there was wild parrots in the UK but I had no idea there was wallabies and the like!

Amazing really. Some animals just thrive in the wild. Often to the detriment of native species but still

Well - we live in rurally, and in 2000 there was the big foot and mouth outbreak. All the bridle paths and foot paths around here were closed, and large swathes of the countryside had no one in them for weeks.

After a while a couple of landowners round here were finding some of their ponies with horrible and really unusual injuries (throat). There were a couple of sightings of a tan coloured 'big cat' up on the hills. Just as this started DH told me he might have seen a big cat jumping the fence at the bottom of our garden near the river and run into the fields. It was twilight and he happened to be looking out of the bedroom window at the time. He's not one to be swept up in local gossip or hysteria.

Personally i've never seen anything. I'd never say never though.

I should have explained that the theory was that the lack of human presence in the countryside had perhaps made the cat/s bold enough to come near the village and get among the livestock.

I’ve always been a bit when people have posted photos of big cats but this one really got me

I live in the middle of no where. There is probably about 70 houses and no shops. Lots of big open fields where plenty of wildlife including rabbits, hares and deer have been seen.

This cat was seen at about 9am in the morning so not at all muddied by dusk or dark weather

3 of us stood there staring at it. 1 thinks it’s just a very very big moggy where as the other two was

It is hard to tell scale when something a distance away in fields.

Some of the rows of bushes up on the hills out of the front of us look like very distant trees. Looks like it might take hours to trek to them. In fact you can walk to them in about 10 mins.

Am i making sense?

DH seeing this thing so close to the house jumping over a thing he knows well (our fence) makes me think he judged the size quite correctly even though it was twilight.

There's a Facebook page for this called big cat sightings or similar which can be quite interesting but a lot of trolls photoshop photos to try and get them all excited.

I believe it for sure.

Myth.
I think there might have been the odd one over the years that has escaped from private collections..I think there was a licensing change quite a few years ago that made it more expensive to own these animals and a few 'escaped'.
If there were breeding populations you would find more evidence like scat and skeletons, plus lots more casualties on livestock.
Where I live is rural fringe and a recent 'big cat' sighting turned out to be a large, dark coated dog fox.

There would be a lot of dead, half-esten sheep with enormous feline paw prints around them...
And there aren't.

You know that domestic/wild cat hybrids have become extremely popular, hybrids can pretty much be owned by anyone, you don’t need a license, and some owners just treat them as normal cats and let them out and let them roam out the house. In London not long ago the armed police responded to a call about a loose cheetah in Hampstead. Turned out to be someone’s pet hybrid savannah cat. Here’s a picture of it. You can forgive people for thinking this is a loose big cat

The license change was the late 70s, so they’d have died out by now, even those with lengthy lifespans plus it’s not easy for them to suddenly adapt to living wild from captivity, many would have died from being unable to hunt and evade humans.
Also many pet breeds like maine coons are huge compared to an average pet cat.

I find it hard to believe they are breading in large numbers and hard to believe the ones released in the 70’s are still alive however my mum and I swear we saw one in the late 90’s. One of those things that if we hadn’t of both seen it we would of thought we were imagining it!

I so wonder whether wild cats (Either the official native species, or just several generations of undomesticated moggy) could grow quite large, enough to cause “sightings”.

When i was at sixth form circa 96/97, i lived near Bodmin. A friend had a house right up on the edge of the moors, garden had no hedge as i remember, just petered out into moorland. My brother and i drove up there one evening to watch films with my friend.

It got quite late, but we hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains over the windows and french doors in the room we were in. Suddenly, my brother and I both noticed movement through the french doors - something (definitely animal) moved past them, just at the edge of the light thrown out of the room. It looked black (or at least dark) and we both swore that although we only saw it for a few seconds it moved like a cat, not a sheep or cow or pony. It was also about waist high.

My friend was facing away from the door but when we both effectively went “Jesus Christ, what was that?!?” he nonchalantly said that oh yes, they’d seen the beast of bodmin moor several times, and had a plaster cast of its foot somewhere. He and his family were quite into their woo though, so i never took it too seriously. Still no idea what we saw though.

I've seen one near Hemel Hempstead a couple of years ago. I was dropping my daughter off at the scout camp and spotted a big cat through the fence as I was walking round to open the car boot. It was definitely not a domestic cat. I worked at a zoo for a few years and the family that own it love big cats and at that point owned all of them.