Big Cat (Puma?) in Coventry

Can't find anything about the article you mentioned but I remember many years ago when the owner of a paintball site I used to go to regularly said there was a big cat on their site. I laughed it off as so many other people have in the past but a few months later actually saw it for myself. When I thought about it afterwards, it wasn't actually that surprising as we were near Greenham Common US Airforce base after the troops had left - some of them apparently brought big cats over with them originally, kept them quiet after the ban but were then a bit stuck when it came to returning to USA so just released them into the wild (a friend of mine married a US serviceman from the base and he confirmed that several of them kept big cats).

Hi Venetian

I found the following link but am not sure if it's near??
[url]What's on the prowl in Ryton Wood ?[/url]

HTH
Moonfairy
x

Venetian, if you'd seen a big cat in Brandon Woods it would have been our Moet who is 5 foot from nose to tail tip and weighs over 8 kg!

No, it's in Ryton woods and supposed to be a big black one. It's probably the ghost of our Tammy who died in November!

Anyway I'm surprised you live near me...

Anyway I'm surprised you live near me...

I noticed that you say you're in Coventry a while back :), but TBH I've often changed address. While on HP I've also been in London, Somerset, and time in India.

V

Hi Venetian

I found the following link but am not sure if it's near??
[url]What's on the prowl in Ryton Wood ?[/url]

HTH
Moonfairy
x

Thanks. Yes, that's the story. My searches won't have worked maybe as my friend said it was in "Brandon Woods" which are near to the named Ryton area.

I used to get Fortean Times. In fact I was one of their first subscribers, going waaaay back to I think 1974. An article in that magazine once listed UK Big Cat sightings and not one county hadn't had one. But big cats are usually quite retiring. I once lived in Yellowstone Park, USA, which has pumas or "mountain lions" and never ever saw one, whereas bears would come looking for you!

V

V, Fortean Times have a website:

and they have an email update subscription service too. Plenty of cryptids still knocking about!

Yes, thanks, I know about the site, but I tell ya, I've been interested in the paranormal, cryptozoology, UFOs and what-not since I was twelve. I feel there's only so much I can usually take in (!), and I'm full up with the information! Few things get solved: the wierd and wonderful just goes on....

Pals and I kind-of inwardly fell out with FT anyway, when it went so glossy and commercial, probably too frequent to fill well, and then the two great founders sold it.

V

I'm late in posting this so it's too late to find a link. I was on a train 1 1/2 weeks ago and picked up a Metro. A news item there is that a policeman saw a four-foot-long black cat, in daylight, walking along a railway line in Scotland. Ah! I kept the paper. Metro of July 29 actually. He took photos with his mobile and one is reproduced. Looks like a puma. It was near Helensburgh, Argyll.

So UK Big Cats are certainly still out there.

V

I think this may be the video, V, which I noticed on the BBC website a few days ago:

H.

Thanks a heap, Laura. that's it.

V

Thanks a heap, Laura. that's it.

V

Oh good

It had stuck in my mind actually because when I first saw the title in one of the side bars, I did watch it several times, having read the policeman's comment that it was a cat's movement, rather than a dog's.

Being an erstwhile judge of dogs, which process involves much observation of how the animals move as well as hands-on examination, I have to say that I share his view that it is a cat. This was particularly evident, IMO, in the few seconds just BEFORE it got onto the rail track.

Another thing is that, compared to how most dogs are put together, the head is small in proportion to the body.

H.

Hi Laura,

Well, the fact that there are big cats living in Britain doesn't need to be proved. It's accepted by the police now, for example. A while back they (the police!) turned out in force with shotguns to protect a farm from one - in Wales or nearby, as I recall. They've been seen in, I think, every single English county. But they can roam so far of a night, it doesn't mean they live in every county.

There have, amazingly, been no human fatalities yet.* The nearest to it was (1) a woman who trod on one in the dark while it was sleeping, and it left huge scars on her torso, and (2) a lady walking a small dog at night was attacked from behind and knocked out by a big cat a few years back, but woke to find that her little dog, barking, had kept the cat at bay.

I live only a mile from where one has been seen.

*Actually the lack of fatalities is not so amazing. Big cats tend to be shy of humans. They live, for example, in Yellowstone Park, USA, and when I lived there I never saw one or even a trace of one.

V

I saw a panther-like big cat earlier in the year when we had the bad snow, it really stood out against the whitness and wasn't bothered at all by my car. I felt privileged to have seen such a beautiful animal. It has been seen many times in our rural locality, even in the outskirts of town nine miles away - well within a panther's range, but an urban panther? I reported it so the incident would be officially logged.

Not so long ago, I would have been regarded as nuts!

It has been seen many times in our rural locality, even in the outskirts of town nine miles away

May I ask what your rural locality is and where you saw it?

V

V - I saw it crossing the A377 a few miles north of Copplestone. It's often seen at Eggesford forest (son's chum's folks live there and have seen it often), and north of there - so the forest may well be the epicentre of about a 10-mile+ radius area, which is about rght for a roaming cat.

Well, it's back, which probably means it was never far away. But over the last two weeks, the black puma's behaviour has changed. Pumas are normally shy of humans and avoid any nearness, but I guess it's getting used to how humanly crowded the UK is. So it's done as foxes, apparently, and moved into the city.

Several sightings, all within a small area of south Coventry, IN the city. None is likely to be online (?) so no links I can find. Boy, you know how your moggie likes to sharpen its claws on wood(en furniture)? A family here woke to find enormous claw marks on a tree in their garden. And it's been seen very near their house. There are small coppices nearby, so they wonder if it dwells in them.

That England has big cats is now accepted, so I guess - so what? My interest is a hang-on from a number of years ago when the idea was still controversial, disputed, and placed along with the Loch Ness Monster.

V

My other half's dad saw one on Sunday on his way back home to N.Staffs (Moorlands area). He's seen them before, but in a "I'm sure I saw a..." kind of way. This time however, he got a good look at it and it was definitely a large black cat with a short tail, and moved like a large cat too.

Like you say, I don't think anyone can really deny their existence in the wild now.

All Love and Reiki Hugs

Well, so once disputed as a myth or imagination, it's accepted that they're out there now.

Yesterday the local rag had an article with two photos of it "now taken". Cheekily, only towards the end did they say the photos were taken a year ago. Interesting though - or it's getting less interesting I suppose, the more common these sightings get, and pumas or panthers become as much a part of our countryside as rabbits and cows? It seems the way we are headed.

Anyway, a lady last year took photos (two shown) from the window when she was in the maternity ward of University Hospital, Walsgrave. It's by a largish country park, Coombe Abbey. She says it came back in the fields outside the hospital every night for a week (she'll mean evening). So regular patterns. She brought others to see it. "A few people doubted me but curiously no one had the nerve to get a closer look". People in the ward would wait at the windows each evening, for it to come along.

I agree there's no great mystery now. She says: "We used to drive past a guy in Cradley Heath who kept tigers and lions and what do you think happened to all of them? They got released into the wild."

P.S. Local papers aren't known for imaginative headlines. But I do like, "Panther gave me kittens". (Maternity ward ..)

V

Don't suppose you've got a link to the story / photo's online venetian?:)

Oh, I thought the paper was not online, but it is. Here we go with the news on this over the last week or so:

Apparently it outran a motorbike. Any moggie I ever had couldn't do that. (One was so fat, it couldn't really run at all. )

V

Thanks Venetian.

I have to say I am a strong believer in big cats over here in the wild but i'm struggling to believe the photo's on that particular website!

The 'close-up' underneath the first strongly resembles a moggy to me, and unless that fence is 20 feet high and has HUGE reeds / grass growing in front of it then the first pic is also of said moggy.

When is someone going to conduct a few decent experiments and set up some remote cameras in these hotspots so we can really put the rumours to rest!:confused:

I've read a few stories and seen photo's of a few people doing this, but unless there is a concerted effort from a group of people, and they specifically targets areas with multiple sightings I doubt we'll see evidence - These animals are stalkers, they won't be out wandering in front of Tesco's for all to see!!:D

Well, each individual case may be a "rumour", but I thought it was a little-said yet established fact that they are in all areas of the UK. There are cases of police being called out with guns to try to kill one killing livestock on the Welsh border (if I recall the place). A lady walking her dog was knocked unconscious by one knocking her down from behind at night, and awoke to find her dog protecting her. Another lady trod on a sleeping one in the dark, and got bad torso lacerations as a result.

In the case you mention with the photos taken from a maternity ward, I hardly think that many people would wait by the windows each evening, waiting to watch a domestic cat stroll by! Pumas/panthers are not that large, you know, and the shape of it is nothing like a domestic cat.

Fortean Times, even many years ago, found that there is not one county in the UK without sightings.

V

This story continues. A few days back, a family on a short break, boating down a canal near Coventry, saw a big cat walking along the tow-path, only about four yards from them. One of the witnesses had the presence of mind to observe it closely (it paid no attention at all to them) and then use YouTube to look up videos of different kinds of big cats around the world. He's totally convinced from its movements that it was in fact a leopard.

Actually, the sighting was on the same day that woman, also of Coventry, threw a cat into a bin, so the local paper wryly commented that she wouldn't get away with it with THIS cat.

Big cats are usually shy creatures in regard to humans. (One exception is around Mumbai, India, where humans are becoming the only reliable source of meat due to the huge spread of human population.) I once lived on the edge of Yellowstone Park - it's estimated to have about 600 big cats, yet to see one is almost miraculous, so shy are they.

But though there have been injuries to humans in Britain (and one totally unprovoked attack), no one has been killed yet. If that occurs it's obviously going to be a watershed via the media, and the subject of their presence will then never go away.

Apparently leopards are able to bring down and eat anything weighing up to 80 stone ... so am considering putting on a bit more weight!

V

Hi V

I'm not sure if I have mentioned on HP, that I saw a big cat in roaming around a field in Cornwall in the 90s. Black and big it was and I saw it jump on top of a typical 6ft high Cornish hedge and then ran off. A neighbour mentioned last year to me they saw it, about the same period I did.

Local newspaper recently had an article about a big cat:

Best Wishes

RP

Thanks for the link, RP. Apparently there are specialised websites out there now about UK big cats, but I just haven't looked them up. So for the TRULY interested reader, try a search. The local paper did give a website, but I bunged the paper.

"She said: "They were black, with a long tail reaching to the ground and as big as a sheep. The funny thing was that the one we saw walked right up the hedge and was roaming among the sheep and they weren't bothered at all."

Interesting and strange, from your link! Why wouldn't sheep run? And one can surely trust RAF personnel's observations, so 5 to 6 feet long is hardly a domestic cat.

It all goes back to the fact that they are pretty retiring, at least normally. It's official that they exist in the UK now, but since there are few dangerous contacts, they usually escape the news. I predict they'll get a bit more like foxes, and come into the cities. They already are in Coventry! Then, after a major incident, the media will really latch onto the subject.

It's a strange world. I may have mentioned before on HP, but I and a friend once came across a dead South American sloth, in Yorkshire. A few minutes later we came across a forest worker and mentioned it, and he'd seen the sloth alive a while before. An old friend of mine knew the one guy in the UK who owned a grizzly bear over here, and even that escaped into the wild for some weeks! (Covered by the papers a bit.) It was a tame and harmless grizzly, used at the time whenever a bear was needed on a film set!

V

Hi V

That is a bit weird that sheep wasn't afraid of a big cat. May not of been reported properly.

One thing the article didn't mention that experts at Newquay Zoo (which is a few miles away from St. Mawgan) have stated in a TV interview a few years ago that evidence that they have collected points to the certainly of big cats roaming the Cornish countryside.

Best Wishes

RP

The magazine, Fortean Times, once mapped with dots where big cats had been seen or reported in the UK, and it covered every single UK county - every one.

V

A few weeks ago whilst out walking I saw what I can only describe as a very large cat. It was some distance from me, walking away from me, but the long tail that dipped down in the middle made me stop! Larger than a fox and certainly not domestic. Oddly enough just before I saw it I had passed a spot on the path, dirt path, that had what appeared to be very large scratch marks. I jokingly thought to myself I hope it's not a big cat! Was quite shocked to see this animal further on my walk. The area has lakes, some woods and open ground. Then a few days later was told of a sighting in the general area of a large cat and this had been known for a few years. As the cat went off to the right, the way I intended to go, I made a long detour to get home!!

Chicken! Where was the investigative spirit?

V