Report from Chris Smith
Extract from Lurking Menace of the UK's Big Cats
By Nick Otterside in the Aberdeen Press and Journal, July 7 th 1999
Are they overgrown pussycats, the figment of over-active imaginations, or something much closer to jungle reality? The mystery surrounding Scotland's big cats has grown to Nessie proportions. Now experts claim there may be 50 of them prowling our countryside
In Scotland, a puma was caught in the hills north of the Great Glen in 1980, a leopard cat was shot near Jedburgh in the Borders in 1988 and another killed in Berwickshire a year later.
The Ross-shire puma was found in a trap by a Cannich farmer following an eight-month hunt during which he had lost many sheep and foals. The beast - suffering from chronic arthritis - was taken to the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie, where she lived out her last years, dying in 1985. The origin of the Berwickshire leopard cat remains unknown, but the Jedburgh cat originally came from Edinburgh Zoo and had escaped from a private collection in Cumbria.
July 7 th 1999
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