A witness has reported encountering a large black cat he believes could be a puma on a Rhyl water channel known as The Cut, near Lon Hedyn in the early hours of Thursday, 7th May 2026.
The witness, who has asked to remain anonymous, told Puma Watch: “I was walking down the Rhyl water cut at back on Lon Hedyn and Lon Helog but could go no further because a tree in Lon Helog had come down and then about 50 metres away I spotted a large black cat around size of, I would say, a puma, definitely much bigger than a house cat.
“It was looking into the cut like it was stalking something and was very still. It never spotted me and I cleared off on seeing it. I will also report to the police.”
Rhyl and its surrounding coastline have become something of a hotspot for big cat activity in recent years. Multiple sightings of a black big cat have been reported in the Rhyl and Prestatyn area, with several witnesses describing an animal they believed to be a puma.
The waterways and overgrown pathways around Rhyl, including areas near Brickfields Pond, provide exactly the kind of dense, low-disturbance cover that big cats favour for hunting, and the Rhyl cut would offer similar conditions.
Big cats such as pumas are solitary animals with a hunting range of dozens of miles; they are mostly spotted in Snowdonia and the Clwydian hills but are known to range as far out as the Prestatyn and Rhyl coastline.
The presence of big cats in the UK is widely believed to be a legacy of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, which required owners of exotic animals to obtain a licence. Rather than comply, many owners are thought to have released their animals into the wild. Since then, a breeding population of large cats, most commonly pumas, is believed by many researchers to have become established across rural and semi-rural Britain. A BBC study collated more than 100 big cat sightings in 18 months across North and Mid Wales alone, suggesting an enduring and thriving presence.
Have you seen something similar in the Rhyl area or anywhere else in North Wales? Report your sighting here. Every report helps build a clearer picture of big cat activity across the region.
Image credit: © Jeff Buck (cc-by-sa/2.0) geograph.org.uk/p/2566999
The Cut, Rhyl, taken Monday, 22 August, 2011