BIG CAT SIGHTING ‘Large wildcat spotted in English garden’

originally posted by: GBP/JPY
Good eye...it's a juvenile mountain lion....they get kicked to the curb by the mature ones with established terrirory....


The young ones cause the trouble because they are sent roaming.....the turf is crowded NIW for lions and they are desperate for food....

a reply to: Meldionne1

A juvenile mountain lion, in the U.K.?

a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

Actually he’s been in quarantine for the past 2 weeks lol.
He was sneezing and coughing.
The vet said it was an upper respiratory illness, and to keep him away from the other cats.

ETA: But up until His quarantine, he was still going after them.
I personally think he’s just trying to play with them. Because he’s still only 9 months old, and his nature is to play, play, play.
But he gets rough and the other cats hiss and run away.

Wow you could be right on. If this is not your pet is has to be someones perhaps. Or it could be wild and happy. a reply to: Macenroe82

a reply to: Bipolarised

Good call. I can live with that. Let's say three bricks long. Still not large cat size but some on here have said it is more akin to a juvenile mountain lion.

I could get on board with that except I don't know if they are native to the UK. There could be one someone let lose or maybe an expanding range of an isolated population.

Those paws though! Those are not not your average tabby paws. The tail is really close to a mountain lion tail too.

Carol Baskin sent it to eat you.

That article says it was as big as a Labrador but the photo contradicts that. Slightly.

Wild cat at best.

originally posted by: Bipolarised

originally posted by: Maxatoria
There was a journalist on TV a while back who basically said that the papers run these sort of stories when its quiet with a dodgy blown up picture of a normal house cat as told by someone who's eyesight is not the greatest so is just filler for some junior staff member to get a bit of practice.

Do you have a link to that?

It was on the Jeremy Vine show, they were discussing another 'big cat' sighting down Exmoor way I think and he basically told everyone that its a common way to fill up some space in the paper when its quiet.

a reply to: Bipolarised

Floods , Plague and now a mythical 'Fen Tiger' ... we are indeed Doomed.

Sure does look like a Tiger though.

a reply to: Bipolarised

Probably one of these.

en.wikipedia.org...



Big cat, but dometicated.

Or its just the run of a mill European Wildcat

the black rings on the tail give it away

Physical Characteristics
European wildcats are about 1/3 larger than domestic cats, with longer fur and a bushy-looking, round-tip tail with dark bands. They have thick, striped fur and white whiskers. Male cats weigh 11 lbs. to 18 lbs. The females are smaller and weigh an average 7.5 lbs. European wildcats are around 22-28 inches in length and 12 inches tall. They have good night vision and an excellent sense of smell.

a reply to: Bipolarised

Meanwhile, in my neck of the woods...



It's just another day as far as big cats go.

These sightings happen surprisingly often - I bet a fair few of them are just large domestic cats viewed under false perspective. Saying that, I’ve seen one, I think. It sloped out onto a track I was parked on While eating my lunch around 15 years ago. It was long, slender and moved like my mother’s Bengal - but looked the size of a large dog. In the moment I was sure I had just seen a big cat, but as always with these things, I now question my own recall.

But my experience with big cats didn’t quite end there. Last year I filmed a pilot for a documentary about big cats in remote parts of Scotland. I spent a week with a crofter (Shephard) morning out in the wilderness. He was losing whole sheep overnight, the carcasses often licked clean and the surrounding area spotless. He was convInced it had to be a big cat - no other native prey or scavenger could be capable of devouring a whole (sometimes large ewes) overnight - he would often see a sheep last thing in the evening and find only bits head and spine in the morning.

It was compelling, but I still didn’t quite believe. That was until the final morning I was there, when after hearing a commotion in the dead of the previous night (panicked bleating from the darkness beyond my cottage), I awoke to find, around 100 feet from where I slept, two sheep carcasses. The throats ripped clean out - jugulars sliced clean through. One sheep had been eaten down to its haunches. The striking thing, and the game changer for me, was that there was literally no blood or flesh anywhere to be seen around the bodies, and the bones were licked clean. To me, that comprehensively ruled out large dogs, which was at that point the only other possible explanation I could offer. What else could it have been?

It doesn’t sound that crazy when you consider that exotic pets (big cats) were fashionable in the 1970s among the rich. When this was outlawed (the dangerous wild animal act, 1976), many simply released their big cats into remote areas - there are many documented cases were of this.

That there has been big cats living wild in the UK during the past 40 years is undeniable. The question then should be: could a mating population, or populations, survived?

Intriguing! When you’re alone in a forest in the middle of Scotland and it’s getting dark... your more inclined to say... yes!