TOP TEN CATS: © BBC
3/23/06
-The Beast of Bodmin Moor Spotted on and off for 20 years
-The Exmoor Beast First sighted in the early 1980s
-The Leicestershire Big Cat Footage of the beast was shot by a farmer at Measham
-The Telford Puma Caught on CCTV in 1999, the RSPCA believed it was a puma
-The Beast of Gloucester First reports in 1993, it has appeared around the Cotswolds and the Forest of Dean
-The Beast of Bodmin Moor Spotted on and off for 20 years
-The Exmoor Beast First sighted in the early 1980s
-The Leicestershire Big Cat Footage of the beast was shot by a farmer at Measham
-The Telford Puma Caught on CCTV in 1999, the RSPCA believed it was a puma
-The Beast of Gloucester First reports in 1993, it has appeared around the Cotswolds and the Forest of Dean
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Feline sceptical? Read on
Aug 19 2005
Catrin Pascoe, Western Mail
Beast of Bont - the alleged killer puma is said to have mutilated 50 sheep in Pontrhydfendigaid, near Aberystwyth, since 1995. Police marksmen combed the Tywi Forest to no avail.
Beast of Tonmawr - terrified residents claimed a large cat screamed and growled at them in the Afan/Neath Forest five years ago. London Zoo officials identified the creature as a North American jungle cat after a plaster cast was taken from paw prints.
Carmarthen cats - Experts blamed the death of lambs on a farm in Whitemill on a family of pumas.
Powys puma - Responsible for killing four sheep on a farm in Llangurig in 1980, police marksmen and RSPCA officials surrounded the creature in a barn, but it slipped out of a rear exit.
Beast of Bala - it killed lambs on a farm in Llanuwchllyn in 1995 and was killed by a farmer. It turned out to be a pet lemur.
Beast of Bont, Mark II - Police performed a helicopter search for a vicious creature which terrorised two 10-year-old boys in Pontarddulais, near Swansea, two years ago.
Felingwm foal attack - In 1997, a creature said to resemble a "cat-like beast" savaged a foal in Felingwm, Carmarthen.
Margam monster - Farmers mounted a 24-hour armed guard in fields after a creature was reported to have killed sheep. Worried parents were forced to provide their children with escorts to school.
Pontsticill puma - a farmer reported coming within 12 ft of a three foot-long cat which he described as "sleek and glossy".
Bryngarw beast - In 1983, a motorist spotted a large cat in his headlights whilst driving through Bryngarw near Croesyceiliog, Cwmbran.
Beast of Boncath - a sighting of a large cat in Llangoedmor, near Boncath, Pembrokeshire, in January 1996.
.:March 2005:.
THE BEAST OF SYDENHAM
This past week, early on Tuesday, a large black cat-like creature attacked Anthony Holder just beyond his back garden in Sydenham Park, south-east London. He had been trying to coax his cat back after hearing it scream. Thinking it was being attacked by a fox, he jumped his garden fence to chase it away; but a large feline emerged from bushes and pounced on him, sending him flying.
"It scratched down the side of my face and its teeth sank into my fingers," he said. "Its face was so close to me I could smell its breath." He managed to throw it off after about 30 seconds. He estimated it was about 6ft long and 3ft tall.
Police saw a large black cat-like animal "about the size as a Labrador dog". While paramedics attended to Mr Holder's injuries, armed officers conducted a fruitless search of a nearby railway line and allotments.
THE SURREY PUMA
The first major news story about an alien big cat (ABC) in Britain was in July 1963 from a man in Shooters Hill, south-east London. Shortly afterwards, a "large, golden animal" jumped over the bonnet of a police patrol car in the area.
The big-game hunt for "the cheetah" covered 850 acres and involved 126 police with 21 dogs, 30 soldiers, ambulance men and RSPCA officials. Some 7in-wide pawprints were found, but no cheetah. Then police learnt several sightings of large cats had been made around Surrey since the previous winter.
A journalist coined the term "the Surrey Puma", public imagination was fired and scores of ABCs were reported across south-east England, answering to widely differing descriptions. To give an idea of the scale of this, the day-book of Godalming police station in Surrey listed 362 ABC reports between September 1964 and August 1966.
THE BEAST OF BODMIN
After the Surrey Puma had entered national folklore in the 1960s, large cats in other regions were given catchy titles, such as Cambridgeshire's Fen Tiger in 1978, Devon's Beast of Exmoor and Gwent's Beast of Brechfa, both in 1983, and Cornwall's Beast of Bodmin in 1992. In May 1983, 12 Marines with night-vision glasses scoured Exmoor in "Operation Beastie", after 80 sheep killings in the area since the summer, most with their skulls crushed and their carcasses eviscerated.
Similar livestock depredations grew to epidemic proportions across Bodmin Moor in the early 1990s. In 1995, the then Ministry of Agriculture conducted an official investigation, examining spoor, film, photographs and sheep carcasses. The experts found "no verifiable evidence", but they admitted they "could not prove a 'big cat' is not present".
By: Paul Sieveking - founding co-editor of 'Fortean Times, the Journal of Strange Phenomena.'
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