I corresponded and spoke to the man on the telephone a good
few times but he still insisted that, on his way to Cheshire, having taken the
wrong turning onto a quiet dual carriageway, he had stopped his car to observe
a large cat start crossing the road, stopping and then continuing on its way
for a good minute. He got out of his car and quickly took measurements and made
notes so that everything was recorded on the spot.
Why should I believe him?
Well, for one thing this man was a professor of and senior lecturer in
zoology with many years of field work in the UK and overseas to his credit. He was also used by governmental departments
as an advisor on wildlife. Above all
else he was totally familiar with the cat species he had seen: a puma. He was dumbfounded since, a few months
earlier in Wales, he had almost run over another exotic cat –a Jungle or Marsh
cat; these have been killed on British roads and photographed.
For over thirty years, since 1977, I acted as an exotic
wildlife consultant to UK
police forces. I saw the plaster casts,
the photographs and even hair samples that proved non native cats were spread
from the Scottish Highlands to the Isle of Wight.
Most police wildlife officers who gather this evidence or speak to witnesses in
these cases do not doubt the existence of these cats either.
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I once spoke to a former government minister in a radio
studio and during the on air conversation he poured scorn on the whole
subject. Off air we were talking and the
photograph of paw prints from a certain incident fell from a folder I was
carrying. He picked it up and looked at
it before handing back to me. “That’s
from the Derby
sheep killing site last month, isn’t it?”
I was stunned. It turns out that he had seen my report that went to
Derbyshire police. “I think you are
right that it was a puma” he said. Why had he been so negative on air, I
asked? “Oh, well, you can see the
headlines of ‘government minister admits UK big cats are real!’ and my job
would be gone.”
In fact, the continued claim by the government of whichever
day that UK
big cats do not exist is a public one.
Would people panic if they were told there were large, non native cats
in the countryside? There would be calls
for the government to do something about it –but what? These are elusive wild cats that have not, in
well over a hundred years –and more- of sightings have never seriously injured
or killed a human being –alleged attacks in the past have all been proven
hoaxes. Compensate farmers for live
stock killed by a large cat (if proven) but there is little else that can be
done.
It needs to be made clear that there is only one member of
the Big Cat family recorded in UK
incidents and that is the leopard –melanistic (black) and regular light
coloured. We have plaster casts of their
pawprints, their droppings and even DNA testing on hairs by laboratories that
identify them as “leopard species”.
The other cats most often reported in the UK are the puma –a native, normally, of North
and South America. This cat is a member of the Medium sized cat
family and its colouring ranges from sandy, grey, dark brown, reddish and, yes,
even black.
The next cat species is the Lynx –found in North America and
Europe and was, at one point, a native to the UK.
Some argue that, because of the centuries of reports from the UK, the lynx
may have never died out in the wilder parts of the country. Again, we have good lynx prints as well as
analyses of hairs proving their existence in the UK.
Then come the Jungle cats and what are very likely Golden
cats.
John Aves was driving his van through the quiet Somerset countryside
during good, clear sunny weather in June, 1999. Some 100 metres ahead of him he
saw “the hugest black cat I’ve ever seen in my life –I just braked!” The description given by John was perfect for
a large male leopard. The cat had walked
past a fence that meant John could later estimate its height accurately. But at
the time John could not believe his eyes as the cat moved over the grassy verge
and disappeared by hedgerows. Hoping to
see more of this animal, he got out of the van and then onto the roof. He saw
the cat looking at something through the hedgerow. It was then that he saw a woman riding her
horse through a field was the object of the cats curiosity. Rider and horse seemed oblivious though John
did note the rider correcting the horse when it acted a bit skittish. The woman
rode by and glanced up at John. He
decided to say nothing about the cat.
In Scotland,
during 2002, a couple were returning from church on a sunny morning when the
wife told her husband to stop the car they were in. She thought that she had seen a stray dog in
the tall grass of a field next to forestry.
Then she realised that it would have to be a very big dog. The couple got out of the car and looked into
the field –the road they were on was slightly elevated above the field. “Nothing” said her husband who then
froze. A huge black cat got up from
where it had obviously been lying and “slowly and cautiously” moved to a
specific spot where it then stopped and looked around. The couple were even more flabbergasted by
what happened next. The cats head went
down and then rose, having grabbed the neck of a dead deer and started dragging
it off into the forestry. “We will swear
on the Holy Bible that this is the truth” they told me.
In certain areas the local cat is well known. I was amazed time and again when I began to
advise people on the obvious precautions to take if a cat was seen only to be
told “Oh, we know all that –most of our parents told us when we were
kids.” In some areas cats had been seen
and known about from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Everyone locally knew about them including
the police and everyone behaved with not the slightest hint of panic “its just
out there doing what it needs to survive” I was told more than once.
I remember a nice lady from Ireland
who had moved to the UK
and loved the countryside of Derbyshire.
On several occasions while walking her dogs she had encountered a large
black cat –her description fitted a black leopard and size she could estimate
by later measuring a wall and so on the cat had been against. Eventually it all unnerved her and so she
moved to Cumbria. Three nights after moving to her new home she
was walking along in the dark, torch in hand, when she saw two large things
reflecting light from the torch. She aimed the torch at these to see that it
was a large black leopard sat on a wall –she made her way home quickly. This cat was far from a figment of her
imagination –it was seen about thirty minutes later by a motorist. The woman eventually moved back to Ireland.
The one thing I find interesting is that people in a
particular area will report large cat sightings confidentially and some will
even say “I wish I wasn’t the only one seeing them here!” Restrained by promises of confidentiality
regarding witness name and location I could never tell them they weren’t or
that their neighbour had actually already made a report. All I could say was “Oh, there are reports
from the general area in the past.”
Seriously, in one month I had seven reports from one Wiltshire village
of the same cat, a puma, but not one of the witnesses had told anyone else
because “I don’t want people thinking I’m mad!”
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In one case the old farm lady had taken to walking around
with a pitchfork having seen a puma a good few times around her property. On one occasion she rounded a corner and
stopped. She was face-to-face with the puma which turned an ran “faster than I
did!” In encountering such cats you
should never turn and run. I then got a
phone call about a puma crossing a road by a farm. The couple involved had only moved to the
village a few months before so regarding location all they could tell me was
“It’s right next to a farm, no idea what its called but it’s owned by this
eccentric old lady that walks around with a pitchfork.”
Another plus point in accounts is that people absolutely
insist that they have seen the puma
even though they are clearly and accurately describing a black leopard or lynx.
They have seen on TV items or in
newspapers that “the big cat at large is a puma” so what they saw was the puma. If they wanted to hoax a cat sighting they
would declare it to be a black leopard or whatever.
Then you get the real gems.
People who want to report an odd cat but describe perfectly a juvenile
puma. They do not expect young pumas
after all there is “only” the one black one reported! And mother and cubs have been documented in
the UK, particularly in Wales.
But where do they come from?
Those not doing their research all claim that this all started after the
1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act when people keeping these cats dumped them in
the wild. There was the odd one or two
escapees before that.
In fact, these sightings, escapes and even hunts go well
back to the start of the 19th century and before. Anyone could buy or keep a tiger, puma,
leopard –even, incredibly, polar bears- or other exotic to keep in the house or
to roam the estate and even be kept in little private zoos –menageries. And escapes and dumping of animals from
travelling menageries seemed quite common –and in many cases breeding pairs.
The funniest account I received was over the telephone by a
zoologist from Canada.
He had been involved in work on pumas in Canada but told me that, apart from
the odd call or paw-print he and his colleagues had yet to see one in the
wild. In 1997 he saw driving to the home
of relatives in the Scottish Highlands. It was a beautiful, warm and clear day
and he was enjoying the open countryside and taking in the air through the open
window. At one point he saw a “clearly
adult male puma, reddish-brown in colour walking about twenty feet away in an
open field.” He made a mental note to
tell his colleagues later. A hundred
yards or so up the road he screeched to a halt “This is Scotland!” he said out loud. He had not seen a wild puma in Canada but on holiday in Scotland he
had. What made him angrier was the fact
that he had a still camera fully loaded and a video camera on the seat next to
him.
So, if someone jokes about “big cats” in the UK the joke is
on them. These cats do exist and have
been here a very long time.
© 2012 T. Hooper
Follow-up to the hugely
successful Some Things Strange & Sinister. For those interested in
Ufology,cryptozoology,hominology,unusual natural history,ghosts and
mysteries in general.
The secret history of gorillas -before they were 'discovered'.
Wild men of Europe, the UK and US. Hominology. Giant snakes. Amazons. The Giant serpent of Carthage. Girt Dog of Ennerdale. The Beast of Gevaudan. Crocodiles in the UK. Silent City of Alaska.
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After more than 30 years as an
investigator and more than forty as a naturalist,the author has opened
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The Terrifying EventsAt The Lamb Inn,The Ghosts Of All Saints
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Creatures of Canvey Island,captured bigfoot like creatures in India -all
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Wild men of Europe, the UK and US. Hominology. Giant snakes. Amazons. The Giant serpent of Carthage. Girt Dog of Ennerdale. The Beast of Gevaudan. Crocodiles in the UK. Silent City of Alaska.
And much more. Updated with extra pages and photographs
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From Dead Aquatic (Humanoid)
Creatures, the giant squid and yet undiscovered sea creatures;submarine
and ships crews encountering true leviathans.
Extinct animals at sea
that have been re-discovered and the subject of Sasquatch and other
Hominids around the world as well as two early French UFO entity cases
that still baffle, ghosts, strange creatures-and the Star-Child hoax.
All dealt with by the naturalist and pursuer of the strange and weird
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