SOMERSET BIG CAT SIGHTING

Letter received re big cat sighting

W. Somerset

25.5.13

Dear Sir/Madam

Last Monday evening at 21.15 hrs I saw a panther in the field next to house.  It was there for about 5-10 mins.  I had a v. good view of it.  I did not get a picture – sorry!

Someone gave me the book “Big Cats Loose in Britain” (Marcus Matthews) for my birthday, today, which has prompted me to write this to you.

I trust this information is useful to you?

Yours faithfully,

Gordon Evans

MATT SALUSBURY: Big cats in Dorset - London Cryptoozology Club expedition, with Jonathan McGowan

Jonathan McGowan (above, with sika deer pelvis fragment which he says bears teeth marks from a Big Cat) is a Big Cat consultant familiar to readers of this blog from his talks at CFZ's Weird Weekend, kindly hosted myself and two others from the London Cryptozoology Club (LCC) in early June on one of his regular Big Cat surveys with the Dorset Big Cats Group.

He is a naturalist and works at Bournemouth Science Society, and also does taxidermy. (McGowan said he was busy with taxidermy at the moment, most of it restoring hundred-year-old museum exhibits. The century-old sea eagle he was restoring for the Dorset County Museum had to be moved off one of the armchairs when the LCC rendezvoused at his Bournemouth home.) To his dismay, McGowan's most famous for his roadkill diet, which accounts for all the meat he eats, and has seen him interviewed on TV and radio shows in the US and Russia.

While the leopards reported in the UK used to be almost exclusively melanistic (black) leopards, now we're seeing "more spotted ones," says McGowan. The "leopard wool" (below, the under-layer of fur) we later picked off the barbed wire fences at Purbeck was from a spotted leopard. 

Most people taking the chain ferry from Bournemouth over the estuary head straight for Shell Bay Beach (below, famous for its nudist colony) but few beach-goers are aware that there are "leopards on the beach at night." 

Read on...

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Care2.com (blog)
Panthera's mission since 2006 has been to save the world's 37 big cat species and their ecosystems. Of all the big cats, the most imperiled are lions, tigers, jaguars and snow leopards. To pull these species back from the brink of extinction, Panthera ...
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EDITOR'S NOTE: I am not quite sure what they mean. There are only 7 species in the Pantherinae, and whereas there are 41 species of cat in total, this includes the domestic cat, and the Iromote cat, both of whose specific status is a little dodgy. I am not sure where the figure 37 comes from. I counted 38 subspecies of pantherines alone. There are at least six subspecies of cheetah. JD

NEWSLINK: Zoo begins building new Asian cat habitat

Zoo begins building new Asian cat habitat
globalnews.ca
WINNIPEG — Winnipeg's Amur tigers and other big cats will get new, expanded digs, Assiniboine Park Zoo officials said as they made their latest exhibit announcement. A $500,000 gift from James Cohen and Linda McGarva-Cohen will go towards building a ...
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NEWSLINK: Fun fact: Lions love ice cream too

Fun fact: Lions love ice cream too
KLEW
TAMPA, FL -- Joseph the lion loves vanilla ice cream, and workers at Big Cat Rescue in Florida know how to keep things cool. During the hot summer months cats are treated to delicious frozen treats such as 'bloodcicles' and 'sardini martinis.' Joseph ...
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NEWSLINK: A Tiger with a Runny Nose Turned into a...

A Tiger with a Runny Nose Turned into a...
Dallas Observer (blog)
Vicky Keahey, the president of In-Sync Exotics, the Wylie rescue society where Cairo and several dozen other big cats live, wrote down the nose leakage in the cat's logbook on May 5. "I didn't really think anything of it, because he's had a snotty nose ...
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NEWSLINK: Canine distemper infects big cats at In-Sync Exotics

Canine distemper infects big cats at In-Sync Exotics
Blue Ribbon News
(Wylie) June 17, 2013 - Three months ago, 25 raccoons in Plano were found to have canine distemper, a potentially deadly virus that typically only affects dogs, raccoons and ferrets. Two weeks ago in Arlington, 29 raccoons also tested positive. Cases ...
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