A holidaymaker on a late-night car journey has reported spotting a big cat at the Hafan Y Môr holiday park, formerly known as Butlin’s Pwllheli.
Around 2 AM on Sunday 31st July, Vicki was in the car with her 14-year-old when they both saw the creature dash out in front of them.
She told Puma Watch: “Had been raining heavily all night but had stopped about half hour prior to me getting in the car to go out and pick up my girls from Venu nightclub.
“As I drove out if the holiday park it ran in front of me and disappeared into hedgerows.
“I blinked a few times wondering if I’d imagined it but then my 14-year-old sat in front seat next to me said ‘did you see that?’
“Too big for a fox and had pointy ears.
“I thought black, she thought more browny coloured”
A few weeks after Vicki’s sighting, a resident of nearby Abersoch contacted police after encountering an animal matching the description sitting in his garden.
It follows a spate of sightings in Pwllheli which began in March, when three friends out night fishing reported coming face-to-face with a “very large cat” they believe could have been a puma.
Paul Wilson told Puma Watch: “Myself and two friends had turned up to do night fishing.
“We had just parked our cars when we noticed what at first appeared to be a dog of medium to large size sat upright watching us at approximately 20 metres from us.
“It was sat amongst the dune grass which was on a slope going upwards away from us. I walked a few metres towards it whilst my friend turned his headlights on to illuminate it more.
“We all then realised that it was not a dog but a very large cat that then stood up and turned away and loped away from us turning its head to look back once at us. We didn’t see it again. The cat was as big as a golden retriever.”
Then, in May on the same Pwllheli beach, a father and son were forced to abandon their barbeque when they spotted a big cat matching the same description.
Weeks later, a man found a pawprint at the same location and captured what could have been the same animal on a thermal video camera.
Any further sightings can be reported to us via this form.
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.
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 during the pandemic encouraged big cats to roam further from the hills into more populated areas. Despite human activity returning to near pre-pandemic levels, it seems many big cats are now happy to stay in their new territory.
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.
Last 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.
Hafan y Mor photo © Alan Fryer (cc-by-sa/2.0)