The United Kingdom has a long history of sightings of what have become known as Alien Big Cats.
Or, as ABCs. There’s no doubt at all that the U.K. has, over a
significant number of decades, had an equally significant number of
large cats in its midst. It scarcely needs saying that the U.K. is not
the home of an indigenous, large cat. Pet cats aside, there is the
Scottish wildcat. And that’s about all. But, even the Scottish wildcat
can hardly be said to be a huge, marauding beast. It certainly is not.
As “Scottish Wildcat Action” notes: “Scottish wildcats (Felis silvestris)
look similar to a large tabby cat, weighing up to 8kg and measuring as
long as 98cm. However, there are some key differences. The most obvious
is the thick tail that has a black blunt tip with thick black stripes.
They also have a much larger cranial capacity, shorter gut and a more
angular jaw, good for crunching live prey with.” Moving on, there is the
case of Felicity. A puma, no less. In the heart of Scotland. Yes,
really.
The Scotsman provides this:
“Debates over whether or not feral cats exist in the UK were stoked up
again in 1980 with the capturing of a wild puma in Cannich,
Inverness-shire. Subsequently named Felicity, the puma was moved to
Kincraig’s Highland Wildlife Park where she was put on show. After the
arthritic cat died in 1985, she was stuffed and displayed in Inverness
Art Gallery and Museum. Since the Felicity case, big cat spottings have
occurred in Easter Ross, Kincraig and Tain within the last five years
alone.” Yes, an honest-to-goodness puma roaming around Scotland. It
quickly became clear, however, to Felicity’s new keepers at the wildlife
park that she was very comfortable around people. This strongly
suggests that Felicity had recently escaped from a private enclosure.
Or, that she had been deliberately released into the wild. In other
words, there was nothing particularly strange about Felicity’s presence
in Scotland. By all accounts, Felicity enjoyed her five years in the
wildlife park.
Then there’s the matter of a lynx that was captured in London in 2001. The Guardian newspaper reported,
on May 8, 2001, the following of the eye-catching affair: “London zoo
yesterday was caring for a lynx found relaxing on a garden wall in
Golders Green, north London. The big cat was eventually caught under a
hedge by zoo staff called in by police. It had been spotted on the wall
five days ago by Carol Montague, who works for the owners of the house
and garden. ‘I thought it was a leopard or something,’ she said. ‘It was
only about 4ft from me. It was the size of an alsatian, but I could
tell it was young, like a cub. I called the police immediately. I don’t
think they believed me at first, because they just laughed.’ Ray
Charter, the zoo’s head keeper of big cats, said: ‘We get numerous calls
reporting big cat sightings, and so far all have proved incorrect… so
you can imagine my surprise when I bent down to look under the hedge,
expecting to see a large ginger tom, only to be met by a much more
exotic face.'”
Yet again, we’re almost certainly dealing with an escapee from
someone who had secretly kept the lynx as a pet. It’s important to note
there’s nothing new about all of this. For example, it was at Chillington Hall, way back in the 1500s, that one of the first private zoos was established – by a nobleman named Sir John Giffard. According to local legend,
on one fateful day, Sir John’s favorite animal, a fully-grown leopard
no less, escaped from the confines of its enclosure and charged headlong
into the wilds of the surrounding Staffordshire, England countryside.
Arming himself with a cross-bow, Sir John, along with his son, quickly
set off in hot pursuit of the marauding animal. To their complete
horror, father and son found the animal poised to attack a
terror-stricken mother and her child who were cowering on the ground.
In an instant, according to the old story at least, Sir John drew his
bow and took careful and quick aim. At that very same moment, his son
cried out: “Prenez haliene, tirez fort!” or: “Breathe deep, pull hard!”
Sir John sensibly, and rapidly, took his son’s advice and fired. With
but just one shot, the leopard fell to the floor, utterly stone dead.
Giffard’s Cross – which still stands to this day – was raised where the
creature is reputed to have taken its very last breath. Sir John,
meanwhile, decided it might be a very good idea to adopt his son’s words
as the family’s motto. Of course, if one large, exotic cat was roaming
the wilds of the U.K. as far back as the 1500s (albeit admittedly
briefly), then who knows how many other possible escapees there might well have been that weren’t cut down by the power of Sir John’s cross-bow?
The cases I have referred to above are completely explainable, when
it to comes to the matter of how these particular large cats came to be
on the loose in the U.K. (albeit, briefly). In part-2 of this article,
however, I’m going to share with you a body of strange, and even
sinister, data which suggests that at least some alien big cats are
paranormal in nature. That’s right, things are about to get very weird…
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