Report from Chris Smith
Shadowy Beasts that haunt our moors and imaginations
By Allan Laing in the Herald 28 th December 2002
This is no mythical bigfoot; no tourism-friendly Loch Ness monster. The number of sightings suggests Big Cats are out there.
Story of the week: Stories of huge pumas roaming our land have been met with derision in the past. But the sighting by constables of a 3ft creature in Ayrshire has given succour to those who claim big cats are out there, writes Allan Laing.
The response across the police waveband was nothing if not predictable. "Give it some Kitikat," cried some wag back at the base. "Miaw," said another down the line before bursting into laughter. But for Constable Bob Reid and his two colleagues at the scene the strange events that occurred in Ardrossan in the early hours of Monday morning were about as far removed from funny as you can get. What they faced was a 3ft-tall, dark-coloured cat-like beast with piercing yellow eyes and a very long tail indeed. Scary? Well, perhaps a little. ("Walk backwards slowly and don't ,whatever you do, look it in the eyes," was the sound of advice radioed in from a police dog handler.)
Speaking about the incident for the first time yesterday, the 36-year old policeman, an officer for 15 years, admitted to being slightly reluctant about recalling the details in the cold light of day. There is, after all, only so much leg-pulling a chap can take.
Still, there's at least one man who can sympathise. As an ex-policeman with a fascination - some might call it an obsession - for big cats, George Redpath knows exactly how PC Reid feels. He was a serving officer in Fife when a man walked into his station in 1992 and reported a sighting of a strange, puma-like beast. From that day to this, 58-year-old Mr Redpath, now a landscape gardener, has been following the trail of these elusive creatures.
He is not alone. In the UK there are a handful of organisations, and several hundred people, passionately preoccupied with discovering the truth about the cat-like beasts that, apparently, roam the country. This week's sighting in Ardrossan was grist to their mill. Within hours of the incident being reported, big cat enthusiasts were at the scene, searching the ground (in vain as it turned out) for signs of wild, wildlife. You might, were you cynical and unkind, describe them as mildly eccentric in their feline fixation. But, unlike, say, conspiracy theorists ad UFO fanatics, theirs is an eccentricity which is, they say, based on hard facts. This is no mythical bigfoot; no tourism-friendly Loch Ness Monster. The large number of sightings suggests that, unlike Mulder and Scully's truth, the big cats are really out there.
What gives credence to this week's incident is the fact that it was witnesses (and officially reported) by those three on-duty police officers. PC Reid's mild reluctance to say too much about the event is perfectly understandable. Indeed, just a few years ago the temptation for him and his two colleagues not to believe their own eyes might well have proved irresistible. The simple fact is that those days no-one would have believed them.
Redpath, and executive member of the Scottish Big cats group, was somewhat less sceptical when that man came in to his police station to report his big-cat sighting. The truth is that it resurrected an interest in big cats that dated back to his childhood. more than once, while serving in the armed forces in Malaya, he came as close as this to tigers.
As a police officer, he began to make a record of all reports of big cats in Scotland, if for no other reason than the fact he considered it was a duty to the public. They could, after all, be dangerous.
In a bid to prove that it wasn't just figments of people's imagination, he began to record the personal details, such as age and occupations, of those who reported sightings.
"At one time it might have been dismissed as fantasy, young kids playing in woods and imagining things, but not now. More and more people are reporting seeing big cats in Scotland," he explains.
And, yes, Mr Redpath has first hand experience of the beasts. He has made no fewer than four big-cat sightings himself. "I've seen a tawny-coloured one, one that was jet black, a mottled grey one, and a smaller black one," he says.
His most recent sighting was last year in the countryside close to his home in the village of Balmullo, near St Andrews. "My wife and daughter and I followed one. It just kept 50 yards ahead of us, walking close to a wall," he adds.
Like all the others in his 60-strong group of big-cat enthusiasts, it's the excitement of being out looking for the beasts that keeps him interested. The thrill of the chase, if you like. "I'm determined to get a good photograph of a big cat. But it's very very difficult. I've lain out all night, armed with a camera, and night sights, leaving a carcass out to tempts one, but I've never yet been successful," he explains.
Sightings of big cats are on the increase. There have been more than 800 reports this year.
It is estimated that there are between 70 and 80 of the beats - lynx, pumas, and panthers - roaming in remote (and sometimes, as in the case of Ardrossan, not so remote) areas of the UK. Most, if not all, are reckoned to be non-indigenous.
It is generally accepted that their presence dates back to the 1970s, a period when exotic animals were considered de rigeur as a trendy fashion accessory. Then, when the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act came into force and the beats had to be licensed, many owners simply released them into the wild.
Since then they have become the stuff of myth and legend. One of the most celebrated cases, the Surrey Puma, actually dates back to the 1960s when, in the space of just a few years, Surrey Police recorded 382 reports of sightings. The fact that sightings are still being made more than 30 years later suggests there is probably a small breeding population in the area.
Possibly the most illustrious big-cat legend belongs to the so-called Beast of Bodmin Moor. This pesky varmint, credited with regularly killing livestock in various parts of the south of England, was first glimpsed in the early 1980s. There have been hundreds of reported sightings since. In 1995, the beast was briefly thought to have been slain when a peculiar animal skull was discovered in a Cornish river. sadly, it was identified by experts from the Natural History Museum as being the remains of a leopard-skin rug. Three years later, a 20-second piece of amateur video footage, shot near Launceton in Cornwall, seemed to confirm the existence of the Bodmin beast.
But don't get the idea that this week's Ardrossan sighting is unusual and that most big cats, mythical or real, are confined to the south of England. Scotland is not short of its own wild feline creatures.
In recent years, rural Aberdeenshire has been rife with reports of big-cat sightings. On one occasion, a lady from the village of Insch claimed to have been attacked by a beast, an allegation which moved her local MSP, Richard Lochhead, to take the matter before the Scottish Parliament.
He was not the first politician to raise the subject. In ye olden days (ie when Sir Michael Forsyth was secretary of state for Scotland), Alex Salmond, the then SNP leader, asked him to launch an investigation into reports of a large wildcat roaming free in Banffshire.
Meanwhile, in Inverness, there's a former police detective called John Cathcart who, like George Redpath (what is it about coppers and big cats?), is keeping a catalogue of sightings. Hs interest in the subject was sparked off when he was involved in the case of a puma which was captured alive by a local farmer and ended up in a Highland wildlife park.
Despite the mickey-taking, no-one today doubts what was seen in the dead of night on that Ardrossan wasteland.
PC Reid explains: "It was a call out to a report of a woman screaming. We did a systematic search of the waste ground, three of us with big torches. As we walked to the far end and climbed on to a small hill, our torches caught the reflection from a pair of eyes. We thought it was a fox, so we ignored it at first. But the eyes were such a piercing yellow.
"Then the cat came out of the bushes about 35 yards from us. We just stood there and took in the size of it. It was fascinating, moving with these easy shoulder movements towards us. We were standing there for about two minutes, captivated. By now it was sitting. The grass was two and a half feet high and it was a least a foot taller. The cat was looking at us and we were looking at it. Then it moved forward into a crouching position.
It was at this point that the three officers took the advice of their dog-handler colleague and sensibly started to move back towards their vehicles. By the time they returned, now accompanied by the dog handler, the creature had vanished.
PC Reid freely admits that if a fortnight a member of the public had come up to him and reported sighting a big-puma-like cat he would have been, well, sceptical.
But not now.
The Herald, 28 th December 2002
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