A stunned resident of a Nottinghamshire town has described seeing two "large, cat-like animals" in his garden after he woke up to distressed clucking sounds from his two chickens. Adam Archer, 60, said he peered out of his downstairs window to see a large animal standing over the body of his chicken, with another animal staring back at him with a mysterious pair of eyes.
Lincolnshire Live reports that Mr Archer, who lives in Misterton in North Nottinghamshire and owns an engineering business in Gainsborough, said the sighting took place one morning at 3am between Tuesday, July 5 to Thursday, July 7. Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust has said there has been a number of 'big cat' sightings in the country, but there is little to no firm evidence.
Mr Archer said: "I heard a lot of distressed and furious clucking and there's normally no sounds from the chickens at all in the night, that in itself is unusual. It was noisy enough to wake me up, I got out of bed and went to a downstairs window overlooking the chicken run.
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"I went and got a torch and peered out through the glass and basically saw a large cat-like animal standing over the body of a chicken in front of me, along with a pair of eyes of presumably a similar animal about five metres behind it. They had frozen as soon as I shone the torch out and they stood there unmoving, just watching me watching them."
Mr Archer said he then opened the back door and shone his torch as both animals then shot across the garden and disappeared into the hedge. He said the cat-like animals were around 1.4 metres long from nose to tail and were two to three times the height of his own domestic cats.
He said: "The one I could see close enough was a dark, mottled appearance and was short to medium haired. They were definitely not orange like a fox or light-furred. It had a relatively long tail for a cat and definitely had a feline face.
"It was really the size of the cat that was the surprising thing. They weren't leopards or anything like that but they were much bigger than a normal domestic cat."
He added: "We've had foxes in the garden before and they weren’t foxes. They were visibly very large cats. The nearest thing they look like is Scottish wild cats but I think they were bigger than them."
Mr Archer said one of his chickens had disappeared completely with only feathers left behind and the other one was dead with lots of feathers missing. He said that he usually puts the chickens away in their coup and locks the door, but realised he had locked the coup without the chickens in it.
He said: "I was surprised, you don't expect to see large cat-like animals in your garden. We've kept chickens for more than 15 years and never lost a chicken yet to any kind of animal at night."
A Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust spokesperson said: "Without clear photographic or video evidence it is impossible for us to say what the animals might have been. Whilst there have been a number of reports of 'big cat' sightings in many parts of the country, including some reports in Notts, little if any firm evidence exists and we've had no recent reports.
"Native wildcats only occur in the Scotland Highlands. If the animals spotted were not foxes, it is most likely that they were domestic cats or more likely feral cats."
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