(Original headline: Big Cats? Every village should have one )
They're the latest must-have accessory for the smart shires - the panthers, pumas and lynxes roaming the British countryside. But while experts debate whether they exist, Adam Edwards has proof - more or less - that they do
I don't like to boast, but there is a big cat stalking our valley. It was spotted last week. I am not talking about an over-fed moggy that has gone feral or the pub cat that lives on prawn cocktail crisps, but a large, panther-like creature padding about the fields.
It was hiding behind the woodshed opposite my cottage. My dog started to bark at it and it crept into the blackness. It is true that I did not actually witness this event, but my neighbour, Melody Keegan, says her boyfriend did. Or, at least, she says he saw a large, four-legged creature that he swears wasn't the local lurcher.
"It was dark and shadowy and the dogs went berserk," said Melody.
Yesterday it was announced that sightings of big cats are increasing. The British Big Cats Society compiled a list of more than 2,000 sighting last year, compared with 780 three years ago. A big cat is the latest must-have accessory for the smart shires.
I am proud to say that, excluding Scotland and Wales, Gloucestershire is the county with the third highest number of sightings, beaten only by Yorkshire and Devon. There were 104 glimpses of the cats in the county between April 2004 and July 2005, while Wiltshire, a county known for the paranormal, with its corn circles and UFOs, could notch up only half that score. Neighbouring Warwickshire managed just two.
It is my neck of Gloucestershire, near Cirencester, where the big cats are most frequently seen. Last year, there were so many sightings in the area that a local man, Frank Tunbridge, who found what he believed to be droppings of one of the creatures, set up a Big Cat Hotline. And Danny Bamping, founder of the British Big Cat Society, agreed to come to the area in an attempt to gain hard evidence. He described the Cotswolds as "the perfect place" for the beasts.
Then in the autumn the local paper, the Wilts & Glos Standard, printed an exclusive picture of a big cat. It was a fuzzy image from CCTV footage of what looked like an overgrown domestic cat walking towards a zebra crossing in the middle of the town. Bamping said that the paper's picture had "a good sense of scale" and that the quality wasn't bad. He was one hundred per cent sure of its credibility.
"Dozens of big cat sightings have been reported to our newspaper offices in Dyer Street on a regular basis over the summer months," said the paper. The following week, it reported that a resident in a village outside Cirencester discovered 20 big paw prints, each one measuring around four and a half inches in length, in his garden.
"I think it tried to come in through the cat flap because our cat and dog were absolutely spooked," the 35-year-old, who did not wish to be named, told the paper.
The widespread belief that there are big cats wandering the hills around Cirencester has even convinced the Gloucestershire police force to appoint an officer to look into the matter.
"We have had quite a few sightings recently," said wildlife crime officer, Mark Robson, who believes in the elusive quadrupeds, and is keen to hear from any witnesses. "We had a hair removed from a fence post in the Cotswolds earlier this year. The forensic tests were inconclusive, but the scientist said to me that, in his opinion, it was a big cat."
Meanwhile, Terry Hooper, founder of the Exotic Animal Register, who is compiling a list of where the big cats live in Britain, has claimed there is a big cat in my valley. He said it was a "regular-coloured puma". Unfortunately, there is a wide variation in a puma's regular colour, from sandy-brown to slate grey and only very rarely black.
And then, last Monday, I had my almost close encounter when the dogs started to bark and Melody's boyfriend confirmed the nature of the beast.
It is not the first time one has been seen in these parts. It has been witnessed so often that it has been given a name. It is called the "Cadmore cat" after the local woods in which it was first spotted, a couple of years ago, by Simon Scott-White, a stockbroker and former student of Cirencester Agricultural College.
"I first saw these big paw prints in Cadmore Wood," he said. "The prints were about four times the size of a domestic cat. I didn't think any more about it until a few weeks later, when a neighbour said he saw a large cat-like creature run from the wood and cross the lane."
When Simon began asking around, he found that other people had seen the animal, too. A local lorry driver told him he had hidden in his cab because he had seen it and was frightened. A couple of chaps on a pheasant shoot had taken a pot shot at it. A dry-stone wall builder was shocked to see a cat-like beast jump the wall he was building and then, the next day, to find two dead sheep by the said wall. And a local barman claimed to have been knocked off his bicycle by it, although he was the worse for wear.
Simon finally saw the cat when he was out stalking with an estate agent chum.
"I was lying in a field of wheat looking down a steep valley towards Barnsley Wold. It was suspiciously quiet. There were no deer - there are usually 50 or 60 there - and no rabbits or birds. Suddenly, I saw a large black object running 15 or 20 feet along the hedgerow before it disappeared. It was no more than 180 yards away. We were both looking through binoculars and we both saw it. A few seconds later it came out again and took off up the valley towards the village," he said.
Later he produced a set of cow bones from his stone outhouse that he claimed had been gnawed by a big cat. It was, he said, the final proof that our village was being stalked.
But there is considerable scepticism towards the sightings in my valley, which is not overly red in tooth and claw. It contains a string of picturesque Cotswold hamlets that chase the river Coln from Northleach to Fairford. And the cats that live here nowadays are mostly fat cats that spend time and money ensuring there is nothing nasty in the woodshed.
"My barn has windows from floor to ceiling," said Mark Henriques, who lives in an isolated converted barn in the middle of the valley. "I have lived here most of my life, and if there was a big cat out there I would have seen it. We see a hell of a lot of wildlife here and there is no evidence at all for it. It is a case of mistaken identity - most sightings are of lost black Labradors."
And he pointed out that in all the years of big cat sightings in the valley, nobody ever found the carcass of such a creature, let alone photographed or shot one.
The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs agrees with him. A Defra spokesperson recently told BBC Wildlife magazine: "Based on the evidence, Defra does not believe that there are big cats living in the wild in England."
The Big Cats have much in common with the Loch Ness monster, which emerged in the early part of the last century and has always been considered an elaborate hoax. There were no reports of big cats, for example, until 1964, when Scotland Yard joined in the search for a puma. In the Seventies and Eighties there were only a couple of sightings and those were mainly for escaped pumas or the mythical beast of Bodmin Moor.
A lynx was reportedly shot in Norfolk, in 1991, after killing sheep, but the story did not emerge until three years ago. Then suddenly, in 1994, there were hundreds of reports of solitary cats the size of leopards that only came out at night and killed cattle. The reports have been steadily increasing, most of them posted on crank web sites.
"Why did the cats suddenly appear?" asks local author Martin Bryan, who has studied the subject for one of his detective thrillers. "And if they are always alone, how do they breed? And if they do breed where do they rear their pups? And where do they go to die? The enthusiasts never answer any of these questions. Big Cats are a modern urban - or in this case, rural - myth."
But in my view the Cadmore Cat does exist and this has nothing to do with rural one-upmanship. It usually stalks the outside of our house on Monday nights and devours everything edible, including baked beans and cheap claret. I know this because a beast with large claws regularly tears open our black bin liners on dustbin night and my neighbour swears it has nothing to do with his lurcher.
