Report from Mike Inglis

Big Cat Sighting at Loch Ken, Parton, nr Castle Douglas

August 1988

Read the big cat article in the Sunday Post and back came my recolection. Here is my story. We all (wife/ mother in law/ son) went on holiday for a week to the Loch Ken Caravan Park - same week as the Parton Gala/ Games are held. Our Kyle was born in April of that year and therefore we could not travel far. Mother in Law had family in the Castle Douglas, Kirkudbright and Dumfries areas we wanted to show off our boy to and also it was closer than Glasgow for relations from York to drive to see Kyle.

We had stayed at the caravan park before and it sits overlooking Loch Ken and back over the main road a field rises rapidly up a steep hill. I woke up about 7am and decided to take our young collie at the time Shadow for a walk accross the main road and progressed up the field. It was a misty morning but not Brigadoon if you know what I mean and we progressed about three-quarters of the way up the field.

I looked over to my right and saw a big black four legged animal making its way down the outer edge of the field to a dry stane wall which it then jumped over. Closest it was to me was about a football field and a half's length away but it was no outline I saw it was a big black cat.

My conversation with my family when I got back to the caravan centred around my sighting. I explained to them that I had not mistaken it for a big black Labrador because having had dogs I know their legs are spindly and am familiar with the way they walk. What I saw had leg muscle and it glided effortlessly over the dry stane dyke wall at the bottom edge of the field. Just before it did this it looked back though not at me and Shadow and what sticks in my memory is not so much cat features as the powerful size of its head.

Now imagine seeing that and not knowing who to tell such a story too. We havent really been back to the caravan site all that much since but I am sure that I could pinpoint the animals crossing point at the dry stane dyke wall again. Well that's my story, feel free to email or telephone me anytime. I just know that me and the dog didn't move as I was scared realising that something of that size could do some real damage and there I was in the middle of a big open field - where do you run?

Yours Sincerely

Jack

August 1988

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