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Tuesday 27 August 2013

The Cannich Puma: Felicity, Alien Big Cat of the Scottish Highlands


There’s an alien big cat in Inverness - I’ve seen her myself and she’s a beauty. She gazes out serenely from her glass case in Inverness Museum, a grand old lady, calmly keeping the secrets of her mysterious origins to herself.


Wherever Felicity began her life, she ended it in captivity, captured in 1980 near Cannich, 12 miles west of Loch Ness. Police had previously searched in vain for the ‘lioness’ that farmer Ted Noble had seen stalking his ponies.


For over 2 years he had been losing livestock, mainly sheep, finding them savaged and with their bones crushed. The mystery beast had been sighted a number of times not only by himself but by other local people. Eventually, frustrated by police reluctance to make a further search, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He erected a purpose-built steel cage near his farm and baited it every day with fresh meat. Returning to it on October 29th 1980 he found he had caught a 5ft female puma.


Felicity

Unanswered questions remained however and there were even suggestions that Mr Noble was the victim - or the perpetrator - of a hoax. This animal was curiously tame, elderly and arthritic. Doubts were raised as to whether she could possibly be the same creature responsible for attacking and carrying off livestock. Felicity, as she came to be named, even allowed experts who examined her to pet her behind her ears – she was hardly the ferocious wild beast they had expected. And, most intriguingly, the big cat sightings and livestock losses continued even after her capture.

Nonetheless, analysis of her faeces in the first hours of captivity showed that Felicity had recently fed on deer, rabbit and sheep, suggesting that despite her advanced age and tameness she had indeed been hunting and surviving independently in the wild, possibly for some time. The question is, did other big cats remain at large in the area? To this day the Highlands experience an abundance of sightings. I recently met this lovely lady who saw a big cat near Dornoch in Sutherland in 2011 - I'm very envious!

Sightings of big cats in the UK are far too numerous to even begin to give any general account of them here, but here’s one other interesting case from 1927, again from the Scottish Highlands. Following the finding of strange footprints and the slaughter of a number of sheep and goats, an Inverness-shire farmer killed ‘a large, fierce, yellow animal of unknown species’. The livestock losses and footprints continued until a second similar animal had been shot and a third one trapped. When a body was sent to London Zoo for identification it was found to be that of a lynx. (Source: The Complete Books of Charles Fort, p.600, quoting Daily Express, 14 Jan. 1927)

Anomalous big cats aren't just a modern phenomenon of course - reports are spread throughout history (and across the continents).

The idea that such creatures are roaming the British Isles is often scoffed at. Sightings are dismissed as misidentified domestic or large feral cats, hoaxes or just general silliness (and perhaps they often are). Surely if there were big cats living, possibly even breeding, in the UK, we would know it beyond a doubt. Where are the bodies? Where is the evidence?


Inverness Museum for a start.... There's also the Canadian lynx shot in Devon in 1903, recently rediscovered in storage and now on display at Bristol Museum. And Lara ('The Beast of Barnet'), a European lynx captured in a hedge in a Golders Green garden by staff from London Zoo in 2001.


Felicity lived out the remainder of her days in comfort at the Highland Wildlife Park, Kingussie, finally dying of old age in 1985. She was subsequently stuffed and put on display at Inverness Museum where she continues to be one of its most cherished exhibits. ‘You really love that cat, don’t you!’ someone commented as I took my umpteenth photo. (He was from North America so probably not too surprised by the idea of a puma on the loose.)



I do love her. How wonderful it would have been to see her in the wild.

Although I doubt anyone would have believed me....


Links:

Audio recording of Felicity growling in the cage at the time of her capture - Am Baile: highland history and culture

Obituary of Donald Alexander 'Ted' Noble

Scottish Big Cats

Big Cat Monitors UK

Australian Big Cats: On the track of the big cat mystery in Australia, and around the world


Suggested reading:

Williams, Michael and Rebecca Lang - Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers, Strange Nation Publishing, 2010

Shuker, Karl, Cats of Magic, Mythology and Mystery, CFZ Press, 2012

Shuker, Karl, Mystery Cats of the World: From Blue Tigers to Exmoor Beasts, Robert Hale, 1989

Francis, Di, My Highland Kellas Cats, Jonathan Cape, 1993

Francis, Di, The Beast of Exmoor and Other Mystery Predators of Britain, Jonathan Cape, 1993

Francis, Di, Cat Country: The Quest for the British Big Cat, David and Charles, 1983

McEwan, Graham J., Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland, Robert Hale, 1986

Bord, Janet and Colin, Alien Animals: A Worldwide Investigation, Harper Collins,1985

6 comments:

  1. Sorry but your information is incorrect:
    “Several newspapers ran stories about this wild which had been captured, and everyone believed that the mystery of the animal deaths over the previous few years had been solved. They were also full of speculation as to where it might have came from. Various theories were proffered including one suggestion that it had been a stowaway which had jumped ship and sum ashore. After a few days, though the keeper looking after it noticed that it didn’t seem very vicious. He’d been into the cage to feed it and it seemed that it actually to like the company. At the same time results of the sample analysis came back, revealing that it had been fed on cat and other domestic food stuffs. We all started to smell a rat, and realised we had been done. It became clear that the Puma had been a pet which presumably had grown too big. Its owners (Ted Noble) had disposed of it, just as other people dump dogs in the middle of nowhere. More disturbing than that, the owners must have put it into the trap and then rang the press about the wild puma story. As time wore on the keeper got really friendly with it, and it never attempted to attack him. … It settled in very happily in the wildlife park and became quite an attraction. It dies there.” (pages 45 to 47 of “The Vet, Beyond the Surgery Door. A book of the TV series BBC. George Rafferty & Jeremy Mills. ISBN: 0 563 36235 9 ) George Rafferty, BSc, MRCVS, is a working vet (now retired) in the Strathspey region of Scotland. In addition to being a vet, he is the senior vet at the Highland Wildlife Park and Zoo Inspector, as well as a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Scotland.


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  2. I've seen a big cat in the forestry in fortaugustus twenty years ago down past the Canadian log cabin , myself and two friends were driving down the forest track and it walked out of the very tightly packed for trees, it wasn't spooked by the car and sauntered off into the long dead grass it was only 20/30 feet in front of us so there was no mistake we never reported it for fear of ridicule and if we were believed they would have shot it I'm not looking for publicity as I would have made up a story about Loch Ness monster

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  3. Paul Anthony, check you're spelling, then someone will take you seriously.

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  4. Don't spell with my eyes smart arse !

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    1. Il soon show you where it came out from ideal for an animal to shelter there is gamekeepers high seat which would be perfect for a wildlife camera which would give you a view of about half a mile !

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  5. I too have seen a wild cat today. I thought I was seeing things, a lion cub in the Highlands or what certainly looked like it to me.

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