A woman walking her dog in woodland in Carmarthenshire, South Wales, came face to face with a large black cat she believes may have been a big cat. The encounter took place at around 12:00 PM on Tuesday, 21st April 2026.
Claire told Puma Watch: “I was walking my dog in the woods which is very quiet. I noticed something black which I thought was another dog as it was large. I put my dog back on his lead and noticed a very large black cat with rounded ears and yellow eyes and a very black glossy coat staring at us. When it about turned I noticed it had a very large tail and was short and stocky but around the size of a medium sized dog.”
Carmarthenshire’s wooded valleys and remote hill country make it well-suited habitat for a large solitary predator. South Wales has a long-established history of big cat sightings, including a reported black panther encounter near Carmarthen and numerous incidents involving livestock across the region. The Brechfa Forest area of Carmarthenshire — a vast conifer plantation — has previously produced reports of large black cats moving through the area, and the county’s rugged, sparsely populated terrain would provide ample cover for an animal with a wide hunting range.
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 locations further south, including across mid and South Wales, are becoming more frequent. When big cats were banned as pets under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, 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 into the remote environment, where small but significant populations are believed to have thrived ever since.
If you have seen a big cat anywhere in the UK, you can report your sighting to us via our online form.
Main image: © Copyright Alan Richards and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.