BIG CAT NEWS: Gloucestershire sighting/Farmers Weekly Poll

The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper column inches than any other cryptozoological subject.

There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived in some way by us, so we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in.

It takes a long time to do, and is a fairly tedious task, so I am not promising that they will be done each day, but I will do them as regularly as I can. JD

Big cat spotted crossing A40 in Andoversford
This is Gloucestershire
CONVERT: Beverley Jones said she did not believe previous big cat sightings, until she spotted an animal running across the road. Inset: a big cat She said the animal, which was the size of a dog, ran out across the road and into the nearby woods.

The sightings in Gloucestershire continue. Beverley Jones appears to be an eminently sensible witness. She makes no extraordinary claims about the animal she describes as "...exactly like a domestic cat but it was bigger. I slowed down almost to a stop and saw it run into the woodlands. It was the size of a Labrador and black in colour. It had a long tail, the size of its body, which curled at the end. I know what I saw and it was not a dog."

Farmers back big cat claims in FW poll
FarmersWeekly
More than half of FWi users believe that big cats are roaming wild in the UK countryside. That's the statistic revealed by responses to FW's Weekly Poll, with 58% of the 700 respondents so far convinced that the animals are at large.

I am actually surprised that only 58% of respondees believe in the cats! I would have expected the figure to be considerably higher.