Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/18/the-mysterious-wild-cats-of-br.html
…
6 Likes
I remember these were a huge focus of the weird and unexplained, or mysterious animals shows that we’re typically on American “educational” channels back when History was the Hitler Channel.
They we’re usually presented as SPOOKY GHOSTS and often covered along side the Black Dogs that purportedly haunt British people wherever and whenever.
I was sort of surprised when I found out the actual claims in the UK were more in line with alligators in the sewers.
1 Like
I remember the Surrey Puma in the 1970’s.
3 Likes
Early sketch from an eyewitness.
24 Likes
A person on my street has a home-made plaster sculpture of a leopard in their front yard… It’s perched above the sidewalk as though ready to strike. Even though it’s so poorly constructed and comically unrealistic, damn if I don’t jump every time I see it out of the corner of my eye.
7 Likes
So, about ten years ago I was with a friend driving near Glastonbury. We were looking for somewhere to stop so we could go for a walk (and probably smoke a joint), and turned down a small lane.
We quickly realised it was actually a track leading to a farm, but there wasn’t anywhere to turn round, so we decided to drive to the end, and then turn around in the farmyard (farmers hate this, but they’d have to catch us first…).
As we started driving down the track, we spotted an enormous cat at the far end of the track. It looked to be at least the size of a puma, and was a sort of sandy colour. (So far, so similar to all the other reports of big cats I’ve read.) However, as we drove towards this cat, it seemed to shrink, until we were only a few metres away and we could see that it was a normal sized* ginger domestic cat.
I can’t explain why it seemed so much bigger when we were further away, perhaps it was a trick of the perspective down the lane (it was quite straight, with some trees on each side). Maybe it’s just something the human brain does. Every time I read someone saying something like “It was the size of a dog, it was definitely not a domestic cat!”, I think to myself ‘but I’ve seen a domestic cat that looked as big as a puma until I got close’…
It’s probably not helped by articles like this one, lumping big cats and wolves in with wild boar and deer
*(Well, a big domestic cat, a proper unit, but not out of the ordinary)
6 Likes
I want to believe.
2 Likes
TIL that britain has an equivalent to sasquatch that is feline-based.
3 Likes
Wait, everyone’s up in arms about the big cat, when there’s a giant cave bear on the loose!?!
6 Likes
Wait until you hear about Loch Ness…
3 Likes
yeah, but nessie doesn’t go out and about. she likes to stay in the loch.
1 Like
How about a breeding population being parachuted into Britain by the Nazi’s during WWII in an attempt to sow panic among the British populace? You could have some fun with that.
2 Likes
A fringe theory suggests that the animals may be surviving Ice Age fauna.
Whoo boy. It’s straining credibility enough to posit that these big cats survived, undiscovered, for a few decades, but the idea that there was a breeding population that remained completely undetected for all of British history until recently is an extra level of crazy.
It reminds me of a fringe idea from the 19th century, where British fairy enthusiasts, noting that traditional fairy lore held that fairies were black in color, decided that this meant that fairies were actually an indigenous population of small, swarthy people (who had escaped discovery for all of British history)…
3 Likes
Their prototype weapons test is still out of control.
3 Likes
We got “are you sure that’s a domestic cat?” a few times with our 22lb (lean, fit) Maine Coon (we think) cross (sadly, dead, but of old age). That’s mid-weight for a lynx. He certainly didn’t get smaller as you got closer.
Where I went to high school in rural Southern Ontario the farm kids would talk about monster feral cats killing chickens and how huge they were. I didn’t quite believe them until we adopted one.
We weren’t entirely sure, actually, if our guy was a domestic cat, but he was a snuggler, golden with the children and death to rodents, so he got to stay.
His replacement, Princess Pretty Paws the Millenial Cat… different story…
6 Likes
Sounds exactly like a male Maine Coon. Such good kittehs!
4 Likes
Seems like trail cams could settle this pretty easily. Leave a trail cam a the watering hole and you’ll catch all kinds of animals that you’ll never see in person, even if you live there.
Squibs (who may not be aware that they are squibs) seeing the Grim.
Fools! They are a scourge upon the land!
1 Like
I could go for a little snack right about now.
3 Likes
