2 months ago
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A pensioner has claimed she spotted a mystery big cat prowling around her home in the Scottish Highlands.
Annie Mitchell, 71, said she looked out of her window on Monday when she saw the large black cat which was 'bigger than a Labrador' roaming on old tennis courts outside her home in Kirriemuir, Angus.
It becomes the latest 'big cat' sighting in the UK after Paul Macdonald, head of the Scottish Big Cat Research Team, claimed more than 1,300 were reported in Scotland last year.
A shocked Ms Mitchell said: 'My first thought was "look at the size of that cat - what a long tail" and how big it was. I felt it was bigger than any cat I have seen.
'I went outside to get closer look and was only a car length away. It looked big... bigger than my Jack Russell dog. I thought it was longer then a Labrador dog but not as high.
Have YOU seen a big cat in Britain? Email [email protected]
Annie Mitchell, 71, said she looked out of her window on Monday and saw the 'big cat'
The pensioner claimed the animal, which was roaming around outside her home in Kirriemuir, Angus, was 'bigger than a Labrador'
'I have not seen a cat that big before. It certainly was not a dog. It's movement was low and prowling. It was looking for mice maybe in the field.'
In November last year, remarkable footage emerged which appears to show a 'hybrid panther' in a field only a few miles from Aberdeen.
Images shot by Gordon Welsh near the village of Blackdog apparently capture a large feline creature he describes as the size of a greyhound or bigger.
The 50-year-old, from Aberdeen, said: 'I was just walking at the time and saw it limping – that's what caught my eye. I was like "the hell is that?" but then I was like "it's nae a cat, it's too big".'
The footage, shared on a dedicated Facebook group for Scottish big cat sightings, sparked varied reactions. Some viewers confidently identified the creature as a black panther, emphasising its size, whereas others suggested it was a domestic cat, albeit a large one.
In July, two locals also claimed to see what they thought was a big cat near the village of Brydekirk in Scotland.
Without photographic or DNA evidence however, it remains one of the thousands of unsubstantiated reports that have plagued the Scottish countryside for decades, and fuelled the eternal question: are big cats living wild in Scotland?
Footage, shot by Gordon Welsh, appears to show a large feline which he has described as the size of a greyhound
Two people spotted a very large black cat, the size of a labrador, close to the village of Brydekirk, near Annan, in July last year
Local resident Andy McLachlan, 54, of Kirtomy with the remains of savaged sheep Swordly, near Bettyhill, in north Sutherland in 2012
Among other 'big cat' sightings, a man from Misterton in North Nottinghamshire described seeing two 'large, cat-like animals' standing over his chickens in his garden in 2022.
The year prior, a woman recorded footage of the notorious 'black panther of Rutland' lurking in a farmland near her home in August 2021.
Mum-of-three Michelle Lee, 36, recorded the footage on her phone of a five-foot-long creature prowling around a bush in a farmers field.
The mobile hairdresser said she had been looking for bats with her son Bobby, 12, when she noticed the creature skulking in the undergrowth outside her window. She quickly picked up her phone to film it.
Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) recorded a description of a big cat 'the size of a Labrador' which killed 36 sheep between August 2015 and January 2016, described as 'black or black/brown depending on the light' and 'panther/melanistic leopard'.
And as far back as 2006 a footprint, believed to belong to a big cat, was discovered by police and animal welfare experts in woods near Balbirnie Park golf course in Fife.
The print was verified by experts who said it 'definitely belonged to a big cat, 'most likely to be a leopard'.
Danny Bamping, from The British Big Cats Society, has even estimated that there are between 50 and 100 exotic cats across the UK, with most of them likely to be black leopards.
Have YOU seen a big cat in Britain? Email [email protected]
