Big Cat Diaries (special guest edition) - Spring 2008
Ian Bond emailed me last week to ask if I would do the task of writing this quarters Big Cat Diary. I find this quite an honor, and am going to describe the two sightings I have had and the research that I am now taking on for the ‘Beast of The Bay’.
My first sighting was in early 2005 I was ‘tomming’ about with my friends at the Castle Eden Walkway (Wynyard Woodland Park) near one of the art installments Celestial Kitchen in Stoney Field, if my memory serves me correct. My friend noticed something moving through the grass (there was three of us all in all) we went to the top of the hill in Stoney Field back towards the old railway station and we turned back to look and saw a large feline type animal but sandy coloured, not black like me and my friends expected it to be. By then I had started researching these reports, I had limited knowledge to big cats before the incident, and found that the ‘Puma’ best fitted what me and my three friends saw… My mates both said exactly the same as myself on the size, about as big (if not bigger than a Labrador. (and how sick I am of hearing that expression now-a days). One of my friends with me on the day, is the son of a farmer, and his farther has seen two big cats in County Durham, which have been reported…
My second and last sighting luckily came about a month after the first, when I had got myself sufficiently clued up on the types of animals, and previous sightings. I was being the ‘geeky’ me and train photographing and I caught in the view finder of my camera a black animal, walking across the tracks of Tees Marshalling Yard (near to Maze Park) by the time I could get the camera to function properly and take a decent photograph the animal had disappeared. The size of this creature, when I first spotted it was about as high as the buffer-beam on a standard coal hopper wagon, so about 3-4 ft approx…
I received a report in mid 2007 about a big, black cat sighted in Stillington Forest Park, although there is some doubt as to the accuracy of the report.
In 2007 my interest in big cats was re-ignited, as I began to hear rumors of the Beast of The Bay’s reappearance. For anyone that doesn’t know the Beast of The Bay is a big cat that has been sighted in the Whitby, Robin Hoods Bay, and coastal areas of that locality… This has now become a little hobby for me, collating reports, going to the places that the cats have been sighted and so on…

Summer 2007
I haven’t had any reports sent to me recently so this edition’s reports have all come from the Big Cats in Britain (BCIB) website. They are all quite close encounters and at the very least don’t seem to leave much scope for confusion with domestic cats.
The closest of these was in the Whitworth Hall area of Spennymoor. A large black cat, described as a bit taller and 1.5 times the length of their Labrador crossed the road about 50 yards in front of their car. As the car pulled alongside the farm track which the cat had moved onto they got a good look from about 20 feet as it walked away.
Almost as close but this time without the benefit of a car in between was a report from Berwick on Tweed. This was from someone who was walking quietly through a wood and down to the river in the hope of seeing otters. In this report the observer actually had with them the industry recommended yardstick for measuring big cats, their Labrador. The animal was described as black, 3 feet high and 4 feet long plus its tail or, they conservatively estimated, one and a half times the length of their Labrador. It may have been watching some sheep that were grazing nearby in the woodland and seemed startled, reacting by running down a bank and out of sight over a brow only 10-15m from the observer.
The third was from Tantobie and of a large, reddish cat, described as being Golden Retriever sized (nice to see a bit of originality there). It was about 200m away but 200m isn’t much of a head start as you can imagine from their report:

“We were pushing our son up the road towards Tantobie in his buggy we became aware that an animal had walked out onto the road ahead by the bus depot as we continued towards it it raised its head and really scrutinised us I remember the hair standing up on the back of my neck and I turned to my partner and asked her if she was seeing what I was seeing it was during this time my mind was trying to fit what I was seeing with what I had in my head for reference at first I thought it was a fox because it was red then I looked along its long body and checked out the tail and realised it wasn't a fox the tail was way too long the worst feeling was knowing this thing was standing it's ground and was really checking us out I then remember trying to convince myself it was a dog?
Then suddenly a car must have been coming through Tantobie towards us as the animals ears pricked and then any doubts about it were completely dispelled as it leapt to the fence at the other side of the road, cleared it in a single fluid bound and disappeared across the field at full tilt this was when we realised it was a very large cat because of the way it moved it was beautiful we had always wondered what had been eviscerating lambs in the field at night because when it was lambing season there was always lambs taken in the night here and the dog would refuse to go out there the farmer would just pick up the carcasses and nothing would be said ! i remember reporting the sighting to the RSPCA and was suprised to be told i was the third sighting that year so I didn't feel such a fool I feel lucky to have witnessed this but am always reminded if the car hadn't come i think we were very definately of great interest to this animal !”

Spring 2007
Spurred on by a request from the Big Cats in Britain organisation for an article for their Yearbook, I’ve finally got round to collating all of the alleged Big Cat sightings that I’ve received into some sort of a report. Since I started the Big Cat Diaries about 6 years ago I’d received some 65 reports as of last November. Of these forty-two can best be described as Panther; five as Puma; three as Lynx with fifteen unspecified. The unspecified category included those second-hand reports where there wasn’t sufficient detail given to assign the animal to a species category. It also included a few first-hand reports which might have been well observed and clearly reported, but where the description didn’t comfortably fit with a known species. At the end of the report I concluded that:
“From the quality of some of the reports there is good reason to believe that there are, or have been recently, Big Cats of at least three different species at large in the North East. What seems equally as clear though is that these are largely isolated individuals and, even allowing for the occasional breeding event, this is a population that would be described in any other circumstances as critically endangered or even effectively extinct. In my opinion, whether we continue to have Big Cats in the North East depends either on future surreptitious releases or whether there are viable populations of these animals in other parts of the country from which individuals could disperse into the region; whilst the former is always possible, the latter I think is very unlikely.”
For those who would like a little more detail I am happy to e-mail out the report if you want to contact me on ian.bond105@ntlworld.com or you could buy the whole Yearbook from the BCIB website.
Having come to the above conclusion, I thought that this might be a good point to draw the “Diaries” to a close however the reports keep on rolling in so I shall probably continue with them until the clammer to stop reaches my ears.
At the beginning of December, Jonathan Pounder and I led a guided walk entitled “The Path of the Panther”. We weren’t expecting to find any panthers but rather used it as a badge to try and drum up some interest for a walk through, what is probably, the least-populated and least-explored part of East Durham. We’d planned the walk before I’d plotted the Big Cat reports onto a map and I subsequently found that most of them were actually from further south or east with the only recent one near the route being the sighting at Pudding Poke Farm last year. As confirmation that this isn’t Big Cat Country we were talking to one of the farmers. He mainly farms sheep, several hundred of them in fact, and he claimed not to have seen any evidence of a Big Cat. However, a few days after the walk George Howe was told by a farmer next to Pudding Poke that last winter he saw very large paw prints that weren’t dogs in the snow at the back of his house. The resulting publicity from the walk has so far produced several other reports, one of which is reproduced below:

• July 06. Big, puma-sized albeit low to the ground, black or very dark, cat running along road in front of the witnesses car for some seconds, on the road between Ledgate and Lanchester. (Report via Veronica Carnell)
• Three reports via Phil Roxby at Darlington Countryside Section. Two were of a big, black cat in 2004 at Skerningham Woods in Darlington. Interestingly, for me at least, this is less than a mile from where I live. The third was of a puma, seen in 2003 between Darlington and Hurworth.
• A black, panther-sized cat was seen by a Durham County Council countryside ranger at Hardwick Hall, near Sedgefield, seven years ago.
• Sitting in the planning department reception talking to George Howe about animal footprints, a man waiting to see about a planning application overheard and asked if we were talking about the big cat. He and another witness had seen what they classed as a big cat last summer as it ran between some bushes near the A179/A19 junction. He described it as black and three feet long not including the tail. Also in the snow last winter he found large cat-like footprints, the size of his hand, in his garden in Hartlepool, which at the time was on the edge of a new housing estate overlooking the countryside. The prints were so large that he felt that the cat that he had seen must have been a youngster as whatever made the prints would have to have been much larger. He claimed that several people had seen the cat and talked about it as if its existence was taken as read.

Autumn 2006
The reports in this edition all come courtesy of the work of the “Big Cats in Britain” (BCIB) organisation. In addition to their usual activities as a focal point for records and doing “vigils” one of their members had the bright idea of contacting every Police Force, under the Freedom of Information Act, to ask for their records of where a big cat had been reported. Not all of them have replied as yet but the Cleveland Force has and their six reports are inserted below:

1. 29/09/2000 Masefield Road Hartlepool. "big black cat bigger than a dog, sure not a dog" note newspaper Hartlepool mail featured similar sighting on Hart by-pass several days previously.
2. 13/08/2001 Phoenix park Hemlington Middlesbrough. "large cat possibly a lynx"
3. 04/04/2002 Danby Road beck Norton, Stockton on Tees."Black panther, large black animal with long tail & orange? yellow eyes"
4. 18/09/2002 Lingdale road Boosbeck. "large black panther type cat"
5. 07/12/03 Stillington stockton on tees. " large black cat type animal convinced not a domestic animal".
6. 09/12/04 Errington wood, new marske "black panther, very large black cat to big to be domestic cat".

Spring 2006

The Trimdon Panther made another appearance last October when it appeared off Coal Lane west of the A19. A local farmer was outside his car opening a gate when the cat walked across the road, lit up by his headlights.
Meanwhile, not far down the road at Wynyard, there’s been an unusual visitor at the bird table. My informant was serving a customer who was buying large quantities of bird food and in the conversation asked what was the most unusual thing the customer had had in his garden. To his surprise the customer replied, “a Puma!” It turns out that a large black, Labrador-sized cat (so not actually a Puma) had twice been in his garden. The customer had also seen the same animal on the Wynyard Road out of Billingham, early one morning.
My contact details are now on the “Big Cats in Britain” website, which resulted in a call from a concerned lady from Newfield near Chester le Street. A neighbour had told her of an early morning sighting of a cat the size of a retriever walking along one of the walls around her family’s farm. The cat jumped across the gap of a farm gate without any appreciable effort. The lady in question had herself seen a similar creature from fairly close range about three years previously near Plawsworth. The animal was black and the size of an alsation. She reported the sighting to the police who apparently didn’t take too much interest, but told her that there had been loads of sightings in that area.
According to the Gloucestershire Echo the police force in that county were taking big cat sightings more seriously and had instructed their Wildlife & Environmental Crime Officer to record sightings and gather evidence. There was also a short article in the Northern Echo about the Baglan Beast in South Wales. It seemed that there was proof positive of the existence of a big cat there when an off-duty police officer saw it; casts were made of its footprints and some hairs from the footprints were sent away for DNA testing. The hairs were confirmed as coming from a big cat, but the article just said that it was a puma or a lynx. I would have thought that if they could get it down to big cat as opposed to domestic cat, they could distinguish between lynx and puma. However there now seems to be some question as to whether all these bits of evidence were connected. That is to say: that the hair was from the footprint, that the footprint was from the big cat, that the big cat was the one that the police officer saw, down in Baglan town in the morning! (Make up your own tune!)
Just when I think that I’ve heard the best ever big cat story, something comes along to top it. My new best story concerns a farmer near Richmond who was out driving around his land on a quad bike. Just as he was passing a pond, he looked back and saw what he thought was his Labrador following him. Getting off his bike to scold the dog and send it packing back home, he found himself face to face with; you guessed it, a big, black cat. He was close enough to see the long tail sweep down and back up again, close enough even to see its yellow eyes, in fact he was so close that, realising that he wasn’t armed, he jumped into the pond to get away from the cat. There really ought to be a prize if anyone can beat that one!

Winter 2005
The first two encounters in this edition come courtesy of the British Big Cat Research Group and its indefatigable editor, Mark Fraser, and both involve sightings in two of the North East’s big cat “hot spots”. The first encounter was in early July when a large, “panther” type, cat was seen by a family near Tynedale. What was possibly the same animal was seen shortly afterwards at Duke’s Wood, Hexham when what was described as a large cat walked across the path in front of a dog walker. The encounters were recorded in the Hexham Courant, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have bothered with details like colour, how big “large” was or how soon after “shortly afterwards” was. The next report, although brief, seemed much less ambiguous. It was at Pinchinthorpe, near Guisborough, in early August where at around 1am, a large black cat leapt across the road in front of a car. The driver and passenger estimated that it was 3’ high with a body about 4’ long plus the tail. The driver’s immediate thought was Afghan Hound, by which I take it she meant big with a long tail, rather than resembling an emaciated, four-legged womble. She also reckoned that had they been going any faster they would have hit it, which would have definitely put Pinchinthorpe on the map.
You may recall the sighting by Jack Smurthwaite at Elwick, Hartlepool where he reported a mother and cub. There was a follow-up report a few weeks later at Castle Eden Walkway, but surprisingly no other reports turned up. I caught up with Jack again recently and he was telling me about taking part in the ITV documentary on the Durham Puma. He said that a farm worker had seen it a couple of weeks after his sighting on the other side of the A19, ie about a mile away, but wouldn’t come forward for the programme. He also claimed that a number of other people had seen it but again wanted to keep it to themselves.
From time to time I’m called on to give talks about various mammals and I reckon that the best thing about it are the new mammal records that you get off the audience. I spoke to the Darlington Wildlife Group last month on “Mammaliens” or “Alien Mammals” for those of you who can’t stand puns. Rounding the talk off with some of the odder mammals that might have been living in the British countryside I mentioned big cats. As it happened a member of the audience knew of a couple of sightings local to Darlington, both of them earlier this year. One was by a water board inspector who saw a big, black cat from a distance of about 50m. The cat walked in front of two stacks of bricks, which the inspector later measured as being 40’’ apart. The cat’s body, minus the tail, was the length of the gap. I wasn’t sure of the exact location that he was describing, but it was in the Eaglescliffe, Urlay Nook area and would have only been a couple of miles from Burn Wood where it was reported in the last edition that a deer carcase had been found up a tree. The other record was from Middleton St George, which is just a couple of miles from Burn Wood in the other direction. A friend of my informant had seen a big, black cat there on two occasions at the beginning of the year.
I’ve found some more details on the (dead deer killed by big cat/lambs killed by wolverine) story that appeared in the last two editions. The story stems from an article in the Evening Chronicle in March, in which a farmer is reported to have seen a big cat chase a deer over a fence into some trees and kill it. The dead deer mentioned above was the carcase that was later found at the spot. The suggestion of wolverine was reported as being made by Eddie Bell in response to some lamb predation. Hopefully that makes things a little clearer.
Recent radio-carbon dating of lynx bones found over 100 years ago have brought the species’ history in Britain that bit closer to modern times. It used to be thought that the lynx became extinct in Mesolithic times c3500bp, but in recent years a lynx bone from Scotland was carbon dated to c1800bp. The latest findings, sponsored by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority were on bones from two caves near Settle, one of which was dated to c1800bp and the other to c1500bp. The findings also shed light on a seventh century poem, which mentions a game animal from Cumbria called the llewyn. Although originally thought to be the lynx this was dismissed because lynx was assumed to be extinct then. This now appears not to have been the case and brings the lynx up to medieval times. The find is significant because it lends weight to the idea that the lynx died out due to anthropogenic factors rather than changes in climate. If that is the case, the government is obliged under the EC habitats Directive to consider its reintroduction. I think its time for a letter to my MP!
Perhaps my strangest record so far, and there have been some strong contenders for the title, was of a photo sent to me by a young lady from Sedgefield. She had been walking with her boyfriend in Hamsterley Forest when they came across a deer acting strangely ie wandering about the path in front of them as if dazed. She took her camera out of her bag and tried snapping a photo but, by the time she did this, the deer had wandered off and all she got was a picture of some trees. At least that’s all she thought she’d got, but when she viewed the pictures on her telly, there was a pair of turquoise eyes staring back at her from a cat-like shape. Thinking that it might be a big cat and concerned that someone should know about it, she rang me to ask if I could identify it for her. As you can imagine I thought this could be it, the Durham Puma finally revealed. I was therefore more than a little perplexed when I got the photo and couldn’t see anything resembling a cat (or anything that wasn’t a tree really!). Until, that is, I decided to zoom in whereupon a pair of eerie turquoise eyes appeared on the picture. I still find it unnerving when they pop up, even though I’ve seen the picture lots of times now.

(Inspired by this validation of North East mythology I’m taking the shadow herpetology section up to Chester le Street; we’re not coming back without proof of the Worm!)

Autumn 2005
First up for this edition was a sighting by John Armstrong, again at the Castle Eden Walkway, albeit 10 years ago. John was there at 5.30am studying rabbits for an environmental studies degree. He noticed that the rabbit he was watching was watching something else. The something else turned out to be a black cat the size of labrador and longer than an alsation. He watched this for a few minutes at fairly close range before the cat moved off. Further down the track he saw another, smaller black cat which may or may not have been associated with the first one.
According to another of my sources, he knows a farmer who knows a farmer who has reported sightings of a big black cat at Burn Wood south of the A66 near the Stockton/Darlington border. Also reported were the remains of a deer up a tree
You may recall in the last edition that I mentioned some sightings and dead animal remains near Blanchland that might even have convinced Eddy Bell that there really was a big black cat out there. I have since read that Eddy reckons that these might actually refer to a wolverine. Actually I’d settle for the wolverine, at least they are a Western Palearctic species, but it does seem to indicate the sightings may have been a bit more vague than I’d been led to believe.
As well as following me to Hartlepool, big black cat sightings also managed to follow me on holiday. Whilst visiting Kintyre, we were talking to a local couple about the wildlife there and they told me about a couple of sightings of big black cats their family had had near the village of Tarbet. The husband’s had been a close range sighting of a black cat, bigger than an alsation whilst their son had had a vaguer night-time sighting whilst camping. I think I’ll go to Newcastle next time, not much chance of a Black Cat there. For those of you who saw the Tyne Tees documentary on the Durham Puma, I was very interested in the photo that Philip Nixon had taken of the alleged big cat running away with a rabbit in its mouth. I had seen a grainy version of this previously and had just dismissed this as being a fox. However pausing the video, and looking at it in more detail it was soon obvious that it was a cat, as its legs were far too thick to be a fox. Nigel Dunstone's conclusion had been that it was just a large feral cat. I would certainly agree that its legs appeared too short for it to be a lynx, but wondered if that could that have been an effect of the camera angle. Looking at it in detail its ears appeared to be tufted and it seemed to have a bit of a ruff around its neck, both lynx features whilst its legs appeared too thick to be domestic cat. Even more convincing, its ground colour was that reddish- yellow colour that is characteristic of lynx, but isn't found in any domestic breed of cat. Also the cat appeared to have spots on its back, again not found in domestic cats, except some of the leopard cat hybrids, but a lynx characteristic. So, in conclusion, we had a lynx shaped cat, which had the fairly unique colour pattern of a lynx; would someone like to tell me why it wasn’t a lynx ?

The Big Cat Diary – Summer 2005
I’ve had two reports passed on to me recently by Gerry White. The first relates to about five years ago and was on a side road near Blanchland. The sighting was by a countryside worker who had previously been very skeptical of big cat stories; that is until a large cat with tufted ears and a short tail walked across the road in front of him.
The second report is recent/ongoing. There have been a number of sightings of a big, black cat in the Iveston/Delves Lane area. Added to this a roe deer carcass has been found which has had its head licked clean of hair, which is something only a cat would do. There have also been a number of sheep kills in the area which the farmer had attributed to dogs until recent events. Gerry didn’t have any more details at present, but apparantly the evidence was sufficient to get even get Eddie Bell to reconsider his opinion that there aren’t any black panthers out there. I look forward to hearing how this one pans out.
I’ve finally got round to putting the “big cat” records that people have been passing on to the newsletter onto a spreadsheet. There are over 30 of them, plus I’m sure I’ll have a few more laid around on scraps of paper, however I know that this is just the tip of the iceberg as I only have a few sources of information and there will be many more reports that I don’t get to hear of. I’ve attached a summary of the records below to give people a rough idea of where the records have come from and what they seem to be describing. As there isn’t room here to print all the fields and so let you make up your own mind, I’ve divided the reports into two categories. Category A records are basically those where a big cat is the only reasonable explanation. That isn’t meant as a reflection of the recorder’s reliability, but rather reflects the circumstances of the record; it could well be that all of the records below are of alien cat species as I do screen out any reports that I’m sure don’t refer to big cats. As with all wildlife records, its always a work in progress, so please feel free to let me know any additions or amendments. A full copy of the database can be obtained from me, minus the recorder’s name for reasons of confidentiality.

Northumbria Big Cat records

Ian Bond

ps I am thinking of launching a competition for anyone who can provide me with proof of any of the following fabulous beasts: a feral cat the size of a Labrador, a muntjac with a long tail; a non-human primate around any large water body in Northumberland (I’m not too fussy which species of primate as long as it is over 8’ tall and has big feet). I would possibly accept a wolverine in Weardale or even a 30’ Anaconda; unfortunately I can’t accept pine marten in North Yorkshire, as they are just not cryptic enough anymore.

After a run of big, black cats in Northumberland and assorted lynx, it is with great pleasure that I can announce the return of the Durham Puma. According to the Northern Echo, who ran the story in July, two boys out walking their dog at Scar Top, Barnard Castle, had a brief sighting of an animal, which they described as the size of a big cat such as a puma. They only caught a glimpse of it before it ran off into woodland. No further details were mentioned, so there was nothing to say that it actually was a puma (except that it was in Durham so it must be, mustn’t it?) Judging by the response in the letters page of the Echo, people would have been more inclined to believe the Return of the Pink Panther.

I’ve had two other big cat reports recently, one of them in response to an earlier article. (someone is reading this then; Yes!)

I was interested to read about a dark grey animal sighted near Stocksfield in the spring newsletter. I think that I may have seen a similar animal between Hexham and Haydon Bridge at ~7.30am on 23rd February this year. I was travelling on the train to Carlisle and caught a glimpse of a uniform grey animal less than 20m away. At the speed of the train I only saw it for a couple of seconds but against the lying snow it was clearly grey, larger than a typical domestic cat and with a thick coat. It was looking straight at the train and it looked like a cats face and it was definitely not a dog. As soon as it was gone something told me that I hadn't seen anything like it before and I could not classify it. Alas no photos!
Jonathan Vetterlein
Department of Agricultural and Environmental Science
University of Newcastle

Back in November 1999, acting on a phone call made to the Hancock Museum, I went up into the wilds of Meldon, looking for evidence of a large, tawny/grey feline. Needless to say there were no sightings of this ‘Morpeth Moggie’, but a good look around over several days turned up a large, round footprint with no visible claw marks, although the print was in soft mud. Whilst it is true that one footprint doesn’t make a big cat, the print was definitely not dog shaped, but no other evidence could be found. Has any one else heard of big cats in this area?
Tina Wiffen
Gateshead Countryside Ranger

Stop press: Just this last week, I have heard a rumour of a big cat being found dead by the side of a road in North Yorkshire and being spirited away by a government department. (cryptozoologists with black suits and shades perhaps?)

Spring 2001

In the last edition of the newsletter, I said that we would try for a regular item on evidence of big cats in our area. This did generate another report and, whilst the details are confidential, the report itself was very significant. It would seem that we now have good sightings, by people who know what they are looking at, of three species of large cat in the north-east: lynx, puma and a melanistic, pantherine species. That being the case, we are going to collate sightings or other evidence of big cats in the region. It is possible that the ranges of the three species might not overlap, due to competition or direct predation; so who knows, maybe some patterns will emerge. Whilst I would love to publish any reports in the newsletter, they will be treated with strict confidentiality were requested. Having said that, I am also quite happy to publish articles that take a more sceptical view. Its not that long ago that I read an article by a scientist who was researching the status of alien mammals for MAFF and who took the line that there was no good evidence for big cats in the British countryside. There would seem therefore to be plenty of room for healthy debate. Please forward any evidence, sightings or comments to me (address at the end of the newsletter).
As I don’t have any recent reports that I’m at liberty to publish, I thought that I would relate some close encounters of the feline kind that occurred about 18 months ago at Castle Eden Walkway, where I work. Whilst at least one of the sightings seemed genuine enough, we were sure that there was no big cat resident in our woods and so we played down the incident so as not to cause undue alarm or encourage the macho element. Nevertheless, the resulting public and press interest was most instructive regarding human perception and imagination. The following account summarises what happened and, I swear, every word is true!
The initial sighting was by a middle-aged couple who walk their dalmation at the walkway, early every morning. They were rather embarrassed about it, as good “strange sighting” witnesses are meant to be. Only the husband had seen it and there was no way he wanted to speak to the press about it. What had happened was that as they were walking along the main track, a large sandy, coloured animal had walked down through the trees on one side of the embankment, about 30 metres in front of him. He immediately thought “golden retriever”, until it appeared on the track in front of him. It had a long tail which swept down to the ground and back up again and it was definitely a cat! Needless to say, the “golden retriever” didn’t trot up to them to sniff the dalmation’s rear end. Instead it disappeared in a flash up the other embankment and into the wood. Knowing this chap as we do pretty much ruled out a hoax and, given his description, there wasn’t much doubt that he’d seen a puma. (Interestingly, as we found out later, there had been a sighting of a similar creature a few days earlier, about ten miles down the road in Yarm)
Needless to say, over the next few weeks we had a bestiary of “big cat “ sightings. We had a tortoiseshell big cat, a big cat that was fox-sized and brown with pointed ears and a long, bushy tail (I kid you not!) and the inevitable big, black cat. As Felis chamaeleonensis has yet to be described to science, we took the details with liberal seasoning. Until, that is, one Sunday afternoon when another middle-aged couple came into the visitor centre to report a big cat behind a bush. They explained that they had been going for a walk along with their West Highland Terrier when they met a rather anxious young lady heading in the opposite direction. She told them that her Doberman had charged into a bush after something; the something had growled very loudly and the Doberman had shot out again, terrified. Curious as to what it could be, the couple sent their Westie in to investigate. Another loud growl and the Westie came scampering out again. Perplexed they continued on their way in “did that really happen?” mode, until they passed the same bush on the way back. Just to check, in went the Westie again; a loud growl and once again the Westie beat a hasty retreat. At this point they thought that they’d better tell someone, marked a cross on the cinder track beside the bush and headed back to the visitor centre.
I had to investigate; a platoon of one hundred sponsored walkers had set off in that direction five minutes previously. I grabbed a radio and cast around for something to protect myself with, should I need it. Our tool cupboard is a bit like the props department for a gladiator movie. We have bill hooks, sickles, forks and big, serrated blades on long poles. I grabbed my aluminium litter picker so as not to alarm the public, and set off to find the bush. On the way I repeated to myself what I’d read about pumas being shy, people friendly, cats; “l’amigo del christiano” according to South American legend. I’d been to a carol service last Christmas, I hoped that the puma would realise. The sponsored walkers had obliterated any sign of a cross on the ground and so I had quite a few bushes to choose from. Each was gingerly inspected with litter picker held at arm’s length. After prodding numerous bushes, none of which growled at me, I was just getting to the point of thinking “sucker”, when a noise from the top of the embankment made the hairs on my arms stand up. I thought I knew roughly what a puma growling would sound like; but this was much deeper and more alarming than I’d anticipated. I stood for a while, my turn to wonder if I’d really heard it. Then it came again, this time further away. Unfortunately, or was that fortunately, the embankment between me and the sound was matted with blackthorn and dog rose. I’d look like I’d been attacked by a puma by the time I’d fought my way through that lot. There was nothing I could do, it was just one more report to add to the list and, as it transpired, the last report we received. There haven’t been any other reports in the last 18 months, but talking to some of our older volunteers, there have been a couple of other fairly convincing sightings over the years. So, who knows, maybe it will pass this way again sometime.