Big Cat Sightings.

[peppermintcrisp]

Due to hijacking the other thread I have decided to make a thread and hear of any other sightings.

I will copy my previous post.

Yes, my black cat sighting was in a dense wooded area, in an isolated part of England.

I was walking with a friend, we got a little lost after walking for a couple of hours and it was raining heavily. I felt uneasy for most of the walk, as was my dog - like we were being watched. My friend said ''Oh look, we are not alone there's a big black dog!'' I looked over and it was as PP poster had described.
It was definitely a cat and it was bigger than a lab- quite frightening.

I didn't say the word 'CAT' out loud as to frighten my friend but we both sped on as fast as we could!

I still can't quite believe we have these creatures in the UK. I don't tell people because it sounds ridiculous, like telling someone you've seen an alien.

I've read that DNA was taken from a hair found on a fence in the UK and confirmed to be a Panther

Not sure why people struggle to get their heads around big cats being in the wild in the UK

We know they exist and when the law changed about keeping them some were released in to the wild as the other options were to have them put down or sent to a zoo which the owner's didn't want to do

@LuluBlakey1
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If anyone wants to add their sighting again that would be great.

I have found a blog about a man who took a fabulous photo of a black cat in 1992. This is the area where I also saw a cat. How long do these big cats live for? 😏

I love the idea that there is a colony of wild big cats roaming the countryside
The law was changed in he 70,s though
So would enough of hen have been released to keep on reproducing 50 years on?

I love the thought of this but think we would have more photos of true.

Mine isn't my story but that of good friends who I have known for over 40 years. They moved to mid Wales and have forestry for miles behind them. The wife used to hack her pony all round the hills, its lovely hacking country, never see a soul, and early one morning was riding up a single track lane and a large black cat jumped the hedge into the lane ahead of them from the field on the left. Bombproof pony lost his mind briefly (he was totally bombproof usually, I sold him to her and nothing fazed him). When she eventually calmed him down she turned back to look in time to see the cat leap the opposite hedge into the field to her right. Both her and her husband are farming people, she said 100% this was a big cat.

I was on one visit to theirs about 8 years ago we were talking about this event and her son-in-law was in the room with us and he told me he'd also seen one. He was living more south at that time, towards the valleys, and he heard a commotion in the garden one evening and went out with his torch and caught sight of a sandy coloured big cat scaling the rock which formed the rear boundary of his garden (he was also on a mountain). This guy was a farmer, worked in abattoirs, wasn't one to make stuff up and said he knows what he saw. As an aside, he said in the 70s there was a guy in the area and it was well known that he had big cats on his property (dodgy apparently) and after the ban came about the police paid him a visit. Cat's were gone. I've no idea if that part of the story is true but I believe he and my friend definitely saw one on separate occasions.
Google the Beast of Bont. That's the village my friends live just outside of.

Never seen anything myself but local papers have pictures they claim are of big cats, black panthers I think they said. I don't know. It's possible I suppose. Abandoned or escaped exotic pets never reported as they were being kept illegally

https://www.buxtonadvertiser.co.uk/news/people/peak-district-big-cats-recent-sightings-in-the-county-as-documentary-reveals-clearest-ever-photo-of-big-cat-in-the-uk-4258397

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/people/derbyshire-big-cat-expert-comments-on-photo-of-giant-paw-prints-spotted-on-the-edge-of-the-peak-district-4468807

https://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/people/derbyshire-big-cat-teenage-wild-camper-more-and-more-convinced-he-filmed-big-cat-in-peak-district-a-year-ago-4352268

We know they exist and when the law changed about keeping them some were released in to the wild as the other options were to have them put down or sent to a zoo which the owner's didn't want to do

Wouldn’t any of those released be dead now? I quite like the idea.

My Grandad told me he saw one running across a field one evening when he was going to pick my Nanna up from work, and then DDs Dad - who had been very skeptical when I told him about Grandads sighting - was biking home from work one night and saw one himself, he said it made a noise at him, both of these sightings were in East Yorkshire 🐈‍⬛️

I certainly felt threatened. I believe the cat stalked us for some time. How much of a threat would they have been? My dog at one point bolted at full pelt into the forest barking and it took a while to retrieve him. He doesn't normally go off like that.

What I did notice was that there was a section of private land that had lots of aggressive signs. I thought may be this could be part of a rewilding project?

A lot of people released them into the wild after the Wildlife Act came in, in 1973. For some people it was easier than having to comply with the restrictions on keeping dangerous animals. Totally irresponsible! But big cats have been seen all over the UK. I saw a photo a long time ago, someone had said it was a big cat, rather than a domestic moggy, which was what a lot of commenters were saying it was. When I pointed out that the tail sweeps longer, lower and more upward curving than a normal cat and that all they had to do was compare it size wise, with the trough in the field, they saw the difference. There was one filmed at a Maccys drive through in Doncaster, a couple of years ago, just casually wandering around looking for scraps. They're elusive in the wild, so it makes sense that they're rarely seen. But there are more and more reports of them being seen in built up areas now.

My friends husband, big burly bloke, was fishing at a lake with a friend early morning about 15yrs ago. They spotted this thing wandering about on the opposite side, then it came out into the open. It was a huge black cat. Apparently they grabbed their stuff as fast as they could and ran back to their cars! This was near Crawley.

I'm a long time MNetter (penis beaker etc) and came on here searching for chat about big cat sightings and found this thread!

I saw a big cat yesterday. No word of a lie. East Midlands. It ran across the road approx 50-60m in front of my car (country road between villages, no other vehicles around). Pure black with a very long tail, probably around 1.5m in length, head to tail tip. Small head. It emerged from hedgerow in the left, bounced twice (huge stride) and then disappeared into hedge on the right hand side into a field.

I was alone in the car and I actually said out loud "what the fuck was that?!"...it was 100% feline but far too large for a domestic cat. I slowed down and tried to spot it in the field but it was nowhere to be seen.

I put a post on the local Facebook group as I wondered if there had been any other sightings and I was contacted by several different people with stories from the last few months and up to 25 years. Most had never told anyone for fear of being ridiculed.

What are these big cats supposed to be eating? Where are there dead bodies? (Do they breed inter-species?)

There was a great thread on this, last year I think it was. Kept me entertained for quite a while as I went and read all the background info. I think the consensus was on the thread that there probably wasn't any breeding, but could be a series of animals who are released or escape.

Black panthers or other large black cat have never been indigenous to this country so they wouldn't be part of a rewilding programme. Lynx maybe, but it would be all over the media, in the same way that the beavers have been

What worries me most about the sightings is that if they are too specific about location, some sick fuckers will hunt them.

I used to live in mid Wales and quite a few ppl had stories of seeing big black cats in the hills. And farmers with dead sheep which had been killed by something big.

We have a grey fold cat living locally who is probably the size of a cockerpoo. Very suburban area but at least one "wild cat" sighting per month. I always think of him when you hear about these sightings but I hate even domestic sized cats so might be self preservation 😅

I really struggle with this, on the one hand people who have seen them are often very very convinced and compelling, and often tell tales of gamekeepers/farmers who have seen proof to back up what they are saying.

On the other, I'm a sheep farmer living in a very rural community deeply amongst the hunting and shooting fraternity in an area where there are frequent big cat sightings and none of the farmers and gamekeepers who are out 365 days a year in all weathers at all times of night have anything much to say about it.

It's nearly always members of the public who claim to have seen things with little evidence.

The gamekeeper closest to me can tell you on any given day what animals have been around; they track footprints, track scents and poo and have multiple camera traps, infrared scopes etc as do many farmers and gamekeepers across the country. I really struggle to believe that the big cats somehow have managed to avoid all of these and the professional riflemen out most nights in areas heavily populated with deer, but Joe public with a pixilated out of context camera phone can snap them regularly.

No farmer finding a mauled sheep would just shrug their shoulders and move on. Calves aren't disappearing from fields, goats amd pigs arent being snached during the night, even the remains of most dead lambs can eventually be tracked down to a fox or badger hole somewhere nearby.

No dead big cat remains, no big cat roadkill etc

I WANT to believe it but if big cats were anywhere they would be where I live with large open moorland and very easy prey and... they just aren't.

DH saw a big cat in the field opposite our house about 10 years ago. It was climbing over a low stone wall, and far too big to be a domestic moggy.
He’s a straightforward, educated, and scientifically minded man, so I don’t doubt it.

We’re in South Wales

Interesting!
Could it be lynx?
I know the lynx is not black, but it's large.
Do lynx exist in the UK? (I am not from the UK).

Oh, I see now that @Dussa already mentioned the lynx.