The reality is that folks have been keeping inappropriate large cats
as pets for as long as it has been possible. In England, that surely
goes back to even Roman times. That leads inevitably to a release
simply because the same impulse to keep a pet always makes it almost
impossible to take responsibility to put it down when it becomes
necessary.
What is not likely is a sustainable breeding population and we have
slim evidence of that. Otherwise we have hungry pets who easily
revert to instinct and will generally thrive however unlikely you may
think that to be. There is just too much game out there to go after,
and no one has ever needed to teach a cat to stalk and kill.
So I think that we can put the mystery part aside and let them live
out their lives while keeping the rabbits under control.
Britain's Big Cats
By Nick Redfern
December 14, 2012
For decades, people
all across the United Kingdom - from the cold northern realms of
Scotland to the southern-most borders of England – have reported
sightings of large cats, very often the size of mountain-lions and
equally often completely black in color.
Their many and varied
colorful and memorable names include the Beast of Bodmin, the Essex
Lion, the Surrey Puma, and the Beast of Exmoor.
Needless to say,
no-one should be seeing any such creatures – anywhere at all – in
the wilds of the UK. And yet people do see them, on no less than
dozens and dozens of occasions each and every year. So, since Britain
has no large, indigenous cats in its midst at all, this begs a very
important and big question: where are the cats coming from? Let’s
see…
If someone had said to
me, before I embarked upon my quest for the truth about the big cats
of Britain back in the 1990s, that I would find myself digging into
the accounts of a man known as the Lion Man and his pal, One-Eyed
Nick Maiden – whose moniker made him sound like something straight
out of the pages of Treasure Island or the latest installment of
the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise - I would probably
have merely smiled and forgotten all about it.
But sometimes truth
really is stranger than fiction.
Dudley’s Lion Man –
or Louis Foley, who died a couple of years ago, to give him his real
name – claimed to have been personally acquainted with a number of
people who had stealthily released big cats into the heart of
England’s expansive Cannock Chase woods in the 1970s; largely as
a result of the significant changes that were made, in 1976, to the
Dangerous Wild Animals Act that regulates the keeping of exotic
animals in the UK.
I met Foley midway
through 2000, while co-writing a column on strange mysteries for a
now-defunct English newspaper called The Chase Post. His
fascination with big cats began back in the 1970s, when he purchased
his first lion, ostensibly as a “guard dog.”
Astonishingly, Foley’s
interest eventually resulted in him possessing an absolute zoo of
exotic big cats, including seven lions, plus tigers, pumas, panthers
- and nothing less than a crocodile, too!
According to Foley’s
own, personal recollections of that long-gone era: “Heartless
cowards who bought panthers and other big cats as fashion accessories
soon realized what a handful they could be. They were left to die in
areas like the Chase and many of them would have perished because
they were tame. But I have seen tracks and evidence of kills that
proves there are many that survived.”
Foley added, somewhat
guardedly, that his friend, One-Eyed Nick Maiden, personally released
both a panther and a cougar, after they had been given to him when
their owner became completely unable to cope with caring for the
beasts.
Foley said: “I was
away at the time and I was furious, but One-Eyed Nick had no choice;
we just did not have any more room. I would never release a ‘tame’
big cat because I have respect for them and keeping one is like
having a child. You have a responsibility to look after them. When I
heard about them being released, I would travel in the area and try
to recapture them in case they could not survive.”
In conclusion, Foley
stated: “If people could no longer look after the big cat or
could not afford to keep them – and did not want them put down –
an area like the Chase would be an ideal place to release one. I
lived with my big cats for years and I would assure Chase folk there
is no danger to their lives. Wild cats will avoid humans.”
While there is no
doubt in my mind that Foley’s words do explain at least some of the
stories of large cats prowling around the UK – particularly from
the 1970s onwards – they cannot explain the earlier reports, some
of which date back to the 1940s and 1950s. And then there are even
older reports that date back centuries.
So, I’m confident
that we have a few of the answers, but, to a significant degree, the
mystery of Britain’s big cats remains.
Nick Redfern is the
author of many books on strange creatures, including Monster
Diary, Wildman, Memoirs of a Monster
Hunter, Man-Monkey, Monsters of Texas (with Ken
Gerhard), There’s something in the Woods, Three Men
Seeking Monsters, and the forthcoming 2013 release, The Monster
Files.
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