A woman and her husband have both reported spotting a “big black cat” they believe could have been a “puma” run across the road while they drove through Colwyn Heights.
The encounter happened at around 3:45 PM yesterday afternoon, on Wednesday 2nd February. Colwyn Heights is generally considered an area of Colwyn Bay, it’s situated atop a steep hill and separated from the rest of the town by Pwllycrochan Woods.
Andrea told Puma Watch: “We were travelling up into Colwyn Bay heights to fetch an item we had just bought and as we were going further up a big black cat which was the same size as a Labrador ran in front of us.
“Both me and my husband saw it.
“It had a big black tail and moved across the road like a cat.”
It’s the first sighting reported to us from Colwyn Bay, however, we’ve had multiple reports of similar animals within a few miles over the last year. Additionally, a footbridge in the Nant-y-Glyn Valley, which runs along the southeast border of Colwyn Heights, is known locally as ‘Puma Bridge’.
In May 2021, a “massive black cat” left two pet cats “terrified” of leaving their home in Pentrefelin, a small village less than three miles from Colwyn Heights.
In July 2021, dog walkers again reported a “massive black cat” on the Little Orme near Llandudno, again only three miles from Colwyn Bay. The witnesses claimed the animal had “a glow in its eyes” and also sent in an image of an animal carcass found at the location.
That same month, a woman living in Conwy phoned police after seeing a “black panther” on her garden fence.
Police records uncovered by North Wales Live show that a “black panther” was spotted prowling in hedges around Llandudno way back in November 2012.
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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