Alex Gowney
Senior Member & Supporter
Before we all become paranoid about night fishing, to the best of my knowledge there has never been a photo taken, carcass found, spoor sighted or confirmed print of a large cat ie Panther, leopard or puma. There are people who hunt these as a hobby with no success, the Royal Marines have even tried and the Welsh Assembly had a big cat sightings unit. What there is are feral cats which tend to be bigger than the domestic moggie...they tend I think to be tawny but some may be black. The only wild cats as already noted have escaped from zoos, circuses and are quite easy to catch as we saw recently. Most big cat sightings reported are of black cats so they can only be panthers; these are rare anyway.... An interesting read is Mystery big cats... Given all this I quite like the idea of re-introducing the Lynx in parts of the UK
Certainly no cases of anglers being attacked by big cats Paul.
Interesting comment about the tawny colour. The one my friends saw was tawny but was way beyond domestic cat size. Also, the skin I have seen is tawny and would indicate a leopard sized animal. As far as I know there are no large cats that are naturally tawny which only adds to the mystery. Whatever, there are people who have seen large cats that know the difference between a large domestic cat and a genuine big cat, photographic evidence or not.