A woman walking with her mother and her dog have reported spotting a “massive black cat” they believe was a puma on the Little Orme near Llandudno.
Noticing the animal on a ridge above them, it seemed to be interested in something in the long grass. The suspected puma ran away after spotting the walkers, then after they had climbed the hill to where they had seen the creature, they found this carcass in the grass.
The encounter took place at around 9:30 PM on Thursday 1st July.
Janice told Puma Watch: “I was with my mother walking her dog around the Little Orme from the Penrhyn Bay side. We were going up one of the old steep tracks to the next level of the Orme when we spotted a massive black cat on the ridge above us.
“It looked as though it was sniffing at something in the grass, then turned to face us. It was starting to get dark at this point but I could see the glow of its eyes, I’d say it was about a foot or two longer than an adult labrador.
“Within a second or two of it looking at us, it slinked off into the bushes further over the ridge. Once we reached that level there was no sign of the cat, which would have had a good minute or two to run off through the undergrowth by this point, but we did find this carcass exactly where the cat was.
“I’m not sure if this is some prey the cat has absolutely devoured or if it was just sniffing at a carcass which was already on the Orme. It was about the right size to be a sheep or a goat, although there are loads of wild rabbits living up there which it could be feeding on.”
The area has a history of big cat sightings. Back in May, a suspected lynx was caught on video crossing a country lane near Llandudno.
Previously, a large black cat reportedly “terrified” a pair of domestic cats near Glan Conwy, just a few miles from Llandudno. Huw told Puma Watch: “A big black cat spooked our two domestic cats leaving them terrified about going outside. I caught the cat in the beam of a torch and it was definitely much larger than the biggest domestic cat I’ve seen.”
Further afield, Len claims both himself and his wife have seen ‘black panthers’ living in Conwy County for the last 25 years. The Pandy Tudur resident said his most recent sighting was in 2019, when he saw to ‘pups’, which his wife also witnessed two weeks later. Big cats were also spotted near Llansannan and Cyffylliog earlier this year.
In 2018, North Wales Police issued an artists impression, resembling a lynx, to help the public identify a big cat they were looking for in the Llangollen area.
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 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.
Llandudno photo © Glynn Burhouse (cc-by-sa/2.0)