Two domestic cats have been left “terrified” to leave their home, according to their owner, who spotted a massive black cat prowling outside.
The encounter took place in Pentrefelin, a small village just outside of Glan Conwy, at around 8:15 PM on Saturday 8th May.
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.”
Pentrefelin lies across the River Conwy estuary from Snowdonia, where a small population of big cats are thought to exist. Across the hills in the other direction, on the Denbigh side of the uplands which Pentrefelin borders, are recent sightings in Llansannan and Cyffylliog.
Big cats have recently been spotted a few miles away in Abergele while back in 2012 a black panther was reported to police in Llandudno.
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.