A witness has been left with recurring ‘panic attacks’ whenever they return to the location where they spotted a big cat several years ago.
In November 2018, Mollie was camping overnight at Commonwood Fishery between Holt and Wrexham with her then-boyfriend. During the night they heard a growl “like nothing we’d ever heard before.”
Searching for the source of the noise with a torch, they found “a big black cat with glowing eyes” staring back at them.
Terrified, they ran for the main cabin and phoned the police.
Mollie told Puma Watch: “Went fishing with my ex-boyfriend and we decided to stay the night.
“Around 11/11:15 pm we heard this growl. Nothing we had ever heard before.
“He got out the tent to investigate with his flashlight and shone it on, what looked like a black big cat with glowing eyes.
“We ran to the main cabin hoping someone had left it open (they hadn’t).
“He rang the police and they came down to the fishery and even cut the chain on the gate so we could leave.
“They investigated but found nothing but I know it was real.
“We never returned and to this day I refuse to go in that area, when I do it causes panic attacks.”
In the years since Mollie’s sighting, we’ve had several other reports of big cats in the nearby area, including one matching the same description just a short distance across the fields north of Wrexham.
In March 2021, a newspaper delivery person spotted a huge black creature “with a long tail and orange eyes” in the Hoseley area of Marford.
At the time, Rob told Puma Watch: “He told Puma Watch: “I was delivering newspapers down a country lane when my headlights caught a large black animal with a long tail and orange eyes on the lane.
“It looked my way and then disappeared through an opening in the hedge, I stopped the van and tried to see if I could see it but it had gone.
“I have been down this lane for 20 years every morning and have seen foxes, badgers and dogs but nothing like this.”
Big cats such as pumas are solitary with a hunting range of dozens of miles. They’re mostly spotted in Snowdonia and the Clwydian hills but reports of sightings in urban locations some distance from these areas are becoming more frequent.
Just last month, we shared a report of a big cat in Leamington Spa. While we focus on North Wales and the surrounding areas, we often receive reports from further afield and have shared sightings from as far out as Scotland and Cornwall.
As seen with Llandundo’s now-famous goats, who have taken to roaming the town’s deserted streets during the coronavirus lockdowns, it’s likely that the reduced levels of human activity over the last year is encouraging big cats to roam further from the hills into more populated areas.
When big cats were banned as pets in the 1970s, it was legal to release them into the countryside to avoid expensive rehoming costs. Owners from across the UK travelled to areas like Wales to release their cats in the remote environment, where small but significant populations have thrived ever since.
Earlier this year, the Welsh Government responded to the recent spate of sightings and confirmed the steps they take to investigate any reported to them, including taking casts of paw prints.
A visitor to a Snowdonia animal rescue centre back in 1994 recently claimed he was introduced to four puma kittens. He said: “I strongly suspect that these were released into the wild as they had no paperwork and no money to feed or house them.
“They certainly weren’t there six months later.”
Any further sightings can be reported to us via this form.
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