A Welsh farmer has described the moment she spotted a 'puma or another big cat' near her home. And after posting about the incident on social media, she was left stunned by how many other people have seen something similar.
Suzanne Kay, who lives in Penuwch, said people replied saying they had found their sheep killed after being skinned by an unknown animal. There have been so many sightings that locals have now called it the 'The Beast of Bont'.
Suzanne said: “I was washing up and looking out of my kitchen window, and I thought to myself, ‘that’s a bloody big cat'.
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“It played on my mind, and I thought about it and looked at the perspective, and I realised I shouldn’t have been able to see a cat all that distance away with such clarity. It was unmistakably feline, jet black and it had a long black tail carried out the back. It was about the height of a Labrador - but much longer.
“I posted about it on Facebook with a picture of a panther from Google, and I didn’t expect the response I got – I expected to be ridiculed. I didn’t expect the depth of belief, the examples, the stories, the recollections of dates and places and people and names.
“We could be talking about a new indigenous species. The wild cats of Wales.”
Ceredigion farmer Jonathan Davies also recently discovered that several of his sheep had been 'skinned' by an unknown animal. Jonathan contacted Dyfed-Powys Police in February after several of his sheep were brutally killed at his farm in Ponterwyd.
He claims that a police officer told him that it was probably a 'big cat' that winters in Carmarthenshire's Brechfa Forest, before migrating to Myherin Forest in the mountains for the summer. The officer allegedly blamed the issue on 'discarded pets' abandoned by owners during the 1970's before the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was passed in 1976.
Jonathan said: "I phoned a few farmers and a friend in Devil’s Bridge, and she said she’d been having trouble for about 15 years. She said she loses about six sheep a year. She had inspectors at her farm, looking at these carcasses, and they told her it was a cat.
“She told me to call the police and report it, so when I called up, I said to the policewoman, ‘you’re going to think I’ve lost the plot here’.
“But she said I can see it all on the log that there are loads of reports and it’s always happening. She told me a woman in Carmarthen had lost eight (sheep) in the space of a week - and she had put remote cameras up to try and catch a glimpse of it.
There have been numerous cases since including the killing of 12 sheep in 1981 in the village of 'Bont' - giving the beast its name - and the slaughter of 20 in 2012. Local organization 'Puma Watch' claims to have had 50 sightings since March 2020. The UK Ministry of Agriculture in the 1980s concluded that whatever killed the sheep 'must have been a great deal more powerful than a fox or a dog’.
University of Wales Trinity Saint David academic and bone expert, Dr Ros Coard, also conducted a study in 2007 on sheep carcasses found in the Aeron Valley and concluded big cats were 'responsible' for the bite marks. Despite the claims, Dyfed-Powys Police deny the existence of any 'big cat sighting' log - though have previously issued some guidance for those who have seen ‘the animal’ and are appealing for the public to photograph it and report sightings.
A spokesperson for the force said: “We wouldn’t be able to confirm any suspected big cat sightings at this time. We don’t have anyone specifically trained in shooting big cats, however, our firearms officers are trained in animal destruction for animals that are suffering or dangerously out of control."
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