The black colour thing is interesting. Most of the "I thot I thaw a puddy tat" reports relate to black cats. The cat in Helensburgh was black. The cat I saw in the field in Yorkshire, the one I momentarily thought was puma-sized, was black. I have a feeling the lack of detail and depth on the black coat colour makes it a lot easier to be mistake the size, than if you had a tabby pattern or something like that.
Now, let me get this straight. I can see that Felicity was agouti (or whatever you call that colour in pumas), and most of the real big cat pictures shown have been that colour. The black "big cat" seems to be a cultural thing, and of course we've all seen pictures of black big cats, but I honestly don't know what species these specimens were.
We get lots of reports of "black panthers". Hmmm... do you guys mean black leopard or black jaguar? Not really. Many come right out and say they mean a black P. concolor. Wait a second. We really don't have any confirmation that Puma ever shows this melanism. It certainly occurs with the leopard and jaguar, and other felids. But not the cougar. What is going on here? An undocumented color phase of Puma is being seen all over rural America with regional "hotspots".
So, black pumas or panthers are not actually known to exist? Wasn't there a terrorist group somewhere called the "Black Panthers"? Is the whole thing just cultural? Can we tell the next Danny that starts on about black panthers or black pumas that they don't make them in that colour? Which species of that size actually do come in black?
Half the problem over here is that there are very few big cat experts around (and some of them are mad, look up John Aspinall). Most people have no idea what the different species look like, or what colours they come in, never mind what behaviour they might demonstrate. So nobody challenges Danny when he says things that sound authoritative. Personally, I couldn't tell a leopard from a jaguar from a cougar without looking it up. So of course they just lump all the reports of "big cats" together, and start wittering on about breeding populations. None of the so-called experts seems terribly sure what species is supposed to be breeding though.
Rolfe.