A pensioner has claimed she noticed a thriller massive cat prowling round her home within the Scottish Highlands.
Annie Mitchell, 71, mentioned she appeared out of her window on Monday when she noticed the big black cat which was ‘greater than a Labrador’ roaming on old tennis courts exterior her home in Kirriemuir, Angus.
It is Britain’s latest ‘massive cat’ sighting after Paul Macdonald, head of the Scottish Big Cat Research Team, revealed greater than 1,300 have been reported in Scotland final 12 months.
A shocked Ms Mitchell mentioned: ‘My first thought was “take a look at the scale of that cat – what an extended tail” and the way massive it was. I felt it was greater than any cat I’ve seen.
‘I went exterior to get nearer look and was solely a automobile size away. It appeared massive… greater than my Jack Russell canine. I believed it was longer then a Labrador canine however not as excessive.
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‘I’ve not seen a cat that massive earlier than. It definitely was not a canine. It’s motion was low and prowling. It was searching for mice possibly within the discipline.’
In November final 12 months, outstanding footage emerged which seems to indicate a ‘hybrid panther’ in a discipline only some miles from Aberdeen.
Images shot by Gordon Welsh close to the village of Blackdog apparently seize a big feline creature he describes as the scale of a greyhound or greater.
The 50-year-old, from Aberdeen, mentioned: ‘I used to be simply walking on the time and noticed it limping – that is what caught my eye. I used to be like “the hell is that?” however then I used to be like “it is nae a cat, it is too massive”.’
The footage, shared on a devoted Facebook group for Scottish massive cat sightings, sparked different reactions. Some viewers confidently recognized the creature as a black panther, emphasising its dimension, whereas others instructed it was a home cat, albeit a big one.
In July, two locals additionally claimed to see what they thought was an enormous cat close to the village of Brydekirk in Scotland.
Without photographic or DNA proof nonetheless, it stays one of many hundreds of unsubstantiated studies which have plagued the Scottish countryside for many years, and fuelled the everlasting query: are massive cats dwelling wild in Scotland?
Among different ‘massive cat’ sightings, a person from Misterton in North Nottinghamshire described seeing two ‘massive, cat-like animals’ standing over his chickens in his backyard in 2022.
The 12 months prior, a girl recorded footage of the infamous ‘black panther of Rutland’ lurking in a farmland close to her home in August 2021.
Mum-of-three Michelle Lee, 36, recorded the footage on her cellphone of a five-foot-long creature prowling round a bush in a farmers discipline.
The cell hairdresser mentioned she had been searching for bats along with her son Bobby, 12, when she observed the creature skulking within the undergrowth exterior her window. She rapidly picked up her cellphone to movie it.
Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) recorded an outline of an enormous cat ‘the scale of a Labrador’ which killed 36 sheep between August 2015 and January 2016, described as ‘black or black/brown relying on the sunshine’ and ‘panther/melanistic leopard’.
And way back to 2006 a footprint, believed to belong to an enormous cat, was found by police and animal welfare consultants in woods close to Balbirnie Park golf course in Fife.
The print was verified by consultants who mentioned it ‘undoubtedly belonged to an enormous cat, ‘more than likely to be a leopard’.
Danny Bamping, from The British Big Cats Society, has even estimated that there are between 50 and 100 unique cats throughout the UK, with most of them prone to be black leopards.
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