A 50-year-old police officer has reported spotting a “large, medium dog-sized” cat last night at Upton on the Wirral.
The creature dashed across Saughall Massie Road near the junction with Kingfisher Way, just “200 yards” from a previously reported sighting. In September 2021, an animal matching the same description was seen dashing across the slip roads from Moreton Road to the Upton Bypass roundabout.
The police officer, who provided his details to Puma Watch but asked to remain anonymous, said the animal “cleared the road in about two or three bounds” at around 10:15 PM last night, Friday 7th January.
Any further sightings can be reported to us via this form.
He provided a detailed report and went on to include details of suspected big cat attacks investigated during his police career. He told Puma Watch: “A large medium dog-sized creature ran very fast across the road in front of me whilst I was driving from West Kirby to Upton on the Wirral. It was larger than a domestic cat. Fox sized, but it was black.
“It was the speed it ran across the road that surprised me. Crossed the road in a second. It was so quick I can’t be 100% sure it wasn’t a fox, but it was so fast. I see foxes frequently. It bounded like a cat rather than a fox’s gait.
“It cleared the road in two or three bounds and took only a second. It was about 30 metres in front of me., but I have just googled it and seen reported sightings in the area last September. This location was about 200 metres from that reported sighting at the Upton bypass.
“It ran into a small park area. With my 16 year old daughter but she was too busy with her phone and did not see it. Location is semi-rural on the end of a town. Lots of fields and some nearby woodland.
“I never really believed big cats could live near us and remain undetected, but I am more open to it now. I wonder why there is no evidence or more confirmed sightings.
“I am a police officer, 50 years old. I do have a file and photos I kept from about 10 years ago where a number of sheep where slaughtered near [REDACTED*] in Cheshire. A number of sheep were killed. Farmer reported it to police. 3 or 4 sheep where killed. Throat injuries but not eaten.
“They had canine marks we measured 5 inches apart. I photographed the injuries. Farmer reported another sheep killed the following day. I took the photos to [REDACTED*] for an opinion from [REDACTED*].
“It was inconclusive as the injuries were consistent with a dog more than Cat, but there are no dogs with canines 5 inches apart. One sheep was still alive, it had puncture marks on its throat and face measuring 5 inches. Its trachea was severed and hanging from its throat and it was breathing out of it. The farmer had video recorded it but it had died prior to our arrival.
“I did house to house nearby and an elderly woman stated she had lived there all her life and had seen it before. She had a Polaroid photo of sheep with identical injuries taken many years earlier. There were at the time big cat sightings near Sandbach which was a few miles away and that area was rural farmland.”
*We’ve held some details back to protect the anonymity of the officer.
Any further sightings can be reported to us via this form.
Earlier this week, we shared a report of an encounter with a “black panther” just across the Wirral at Port Sunlight River Park, which occurred back in September. It followed countless others around the Wirral, including several in the last year. Just a few weeks before, Andy spotted what he called “the biggest black cat I have ever seen” in fields near Neston.
A day prior to Andy’s sighting, an animal matching the same description was spotted dashing across the slip roads from Moreton Road to the Upton Bypass roundabout. Another witness reported the same animal on Heswall High Street the day before.
We also shared reports of a large black cat seen limping down Kestrel Road at 2:30 am on 15th August and of an animal matching the same description being spotted on Whitfield Common on 1st September.
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Big cats have also been spotted in Ellesmere Port’s Whitby Park and behind the nearby Costco store this year. A few miles away, Chester has become a big cat hotspot in its own right. This includes one occasion where an animal was caught on camera on Chester Meadows by a delivery driver.
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 yesterday, 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.
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.
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.
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.
