Merged Alien Big Cats in the UK?

I heard from Catharine Niven, senior curator at the Inverness Museum & Art Gallery who says,
" Felicity is indeed in Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, on display in our ground floor gallery. I was at the museum when she arrived and I do remember the photograph, which was taken to attract publicity. I thought it was taken in Inverness High Street, but it looks too busy with cars. The taxidermist was based at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh at the time, so maybe it was taken in Chambers Street before Felicity came north."

So the mystery cat remains mysterious...
 
Oh, I've spoken to that taxidermist! I was sent a lemur to post mortem, and the taxidermist had been promised the body post post mortem, as it were. He phoned me to beg me to do the whole thing with a single midline incision, and keep it as intact as possible. He sent an actual body-bag in a chilled container for it when I'd finished.

I keep meaning to go and see if it's on exhibition. Might be worth seeing if that bench is in Chambers Street.

Rolfe.
 
information received
from
Forestry Commission
Corporate and Forestry Support

231 Corstorphine Road
Edinburgh
EH12 7AT

Tel: 0131 314 6468
Fax: 0131 316 4344

Detailed reports of the sightings are not available but from personal recollection of those present the details of the sightings were:

February 2002

Co-ordinates Grid Reference 626089, time midnight, distance to within 50 metres, observed by 3 people. Size not recorded.

March 2005

Co-ordinates Grid Reference 644093, time 2 am, distance to within 75 metres, observed by 1 person. Size not recorded.

The Verderers of the Forest of Dean were informed of the presence of the animals
Click to expand...
ugh kinda disappointed I don't have an OS map of the area
;)
 
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Rolfe said:
Oh, I've spoken to that taxidermist! I was sent a lemur to post mortem, and the taxidermist had been promised the body post post mortem, as it were. He phoned me to beg me to do the whole thing with a single midline incision, and keep it as intact as possible. He sent an actual body-bag in a chilled container for it when I'd finished.

I keep meaning to go and see if it's on exhibition. Might be worth seeing if that bench is in Chambers Street.

Rolfe.
Click to expand...
I suspect if you were to stand where the photographer was standing your view would be something like this. (Image from Google Maps).
 

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Marduk said:
information received
from
Forestry Commission
Corporate and Forestry Support

231 Corstorphine Road
Edinburgh
EH12 7AT

Tel: 0131 314 6468
Fax: 0131 316 4344


ugh kinda disappointed I don't have an OS map of the area
;)
Click to expand...


Crikey, where do you think I got that map of the Forest of Dean from?

Do what Zooterkin said.

Rolfe.
 
Worked for me. Says just what we were saying about it being a big moggy.

I still think the fun bit would be to find the actual cat, and replicate the footage with a high-quality camera and some closeups of Felix for good measure. Probably too much work for a small return though.

Rolfe.
 
Sigh. Why am I always on the take when it happens. The Pentland Beast struck again today.

This morning one of the shepherds from our farm showed up with a dead lamb. He said three were found dead last week while he was on holiday, then another yesterday, then this one this morning. Nothing had been seen ill. I remarked that I knew he wasn't vaccinating that group in a calculated risk that pneumonia wouldn't strike, and maybe it had.

The odd thing about this carcass was that it was very much eaten away at the groin and the inner thighs - it had been lying with the hind legs splayed, and a couple of buzzards had been breakfasting on it. There was a fair bit more flesh missing than I usually see with scaverger birds, and even more strangely, the head and the eyes (the bit they usually go for) hadn't been touched. There was still a bite of cud in the mouth.

I was still thinking pneumonia, and maybe the buzzards were on steriods, but my assistant said he thought it had been brought down. Then he found a pair of tooth marks on the left side of the chest, with bruising underneath extending right through to the pleura. Then I couldn't find any sign of pneumonia, or any other disease. We turned the lamb over and skinned her back, and found just one more pair of tooth marks on the flexor aspect of the left elbow. Both pairs of holes were about 3cm apart.

Neither of the bites we identified was close to fatal - they were trivial injuries. My theory is that the fatal bite was between the hind legs, though as the lamb hadn't bled out and the body cavities hadn't been entered I'm having to attribute the death to "stress and shock". Then the buzzards, having been presented with a head start, obliterated the evidence while they were breakfasting. I couldn't guess how much of that flesh might have been removed by the primary predator.

The other thing I don't know is whether the shepherd has had four pneumonia cases and a murder, or five murders. The other cases have been single incidents, and if this animal has killed five times in a week, it's upping the ante quite considerably. I still think it's an owned dog though, rather than a stray or a feral, because there still isn't enough meat missing. We're loking at corpses, not skeletons. Today's casualty was the most eaten of the lot, and it looked as if the buzzards had had most of that.

I really, really hope the next thing we hear about isn't a savaged child.

Rolfe.
 
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Sigh again. The shepherd came in with another lamb this morning (nothing to do with yesterday's case), so I asked him about the four dead ones from yesterday's group that we hadn't seen. Apparently one of his assistants said she saw puncture wounds on the neck of one lamb, and another had a leg missing.

This does not sound like pneumonia deaths got at by avian scavengers to me. It sounds as if they might all have been predator kills. I still think this is a dog, because we've still little evidence of killing to eat, but it's a lot more the pattern of events you'd expect to see if there really was something large living in the countryside.

Rolfe.
 
Is there a difference in teeth between cats and dogs? If so you should be able to tell if a cat or a dog killed those sheep from the teeth marks.

It should be obvious cats only eat meat, dogs eat both meat and some vegetables.
 
Goodness, very worrying Rolfe. (no pun intended, as its is not a worryer but a killer.)
Been very interesting reading about your work!
 
rjh01 said:
Is there a difference in teeth between cats and dogs? If so you should be able to tell if a cat or a dog killed those sheep from the teeth marks.

It should be obvious cats only eat meat, dogs eat both meat and some vegetables.
Click to expand...

So if it was a dog, look around and see if some potatoes were dug up, and if anything's been into the mint.
 
I've had dogs here eat their kill. Some of the people here don't feed the dogs, they expect them to go out and forage for themselves, and they have done this with my livestock.

I knew it was dogs because I know how to differentiate the tracks of dogs and coyotes, and all I found were dog tracks. And then one horrific day I got to watch, as I ran across the field to try and save at least some animals. I saw the dogs pulling the animals down and some of them would begin to eat while the animals were still alive. This group of dogs came back again and again, but I think they were all finally shot. They were all domestic pets, they were wearing collars and one had a rag or bandanna tied around its neck.

I've never seen an animal killed by a large cat. I'm sure it happens around here, but I personally have never seen it.
 
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