Mystery Big Cats


			MYSTERY BIG CATS by Merrily Harpur 'An absolute masterpiece...Beautifully, wittily, informatively written. An exemplary classic on a subject of extreme interest...' John Michell In the past twenty years every county in Britain, from Caithness to Cornwall, has had recurrent sightings of 'big cats' – described as being like pumas or panthers. These anomalous big cats sightings are now running at an estimated 1,200 a year. Farmers, gamekeepers, ornithologists, policemen and even parents on the school run have all been thrilled – or terrified – to see what they assume is a big cat escaped from a zoo. Yet these big cats are neither escapees from zoos nor, as this book conclusively argues, the descendants of pets released into the countryside by their owners in 1976 when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act made it too expensive to keep big cats. The questions therefore remain, what are they and where have they come from? With the orthodox explanations overturned, Merrily Harpur searches for clues in the cultures of other times and places. She discovers our mystery felines have been with us for longer than we imagine, and throws unexpected light on the way Western civilisation looks at the world. Mystery Big Cats is the first serious and comprehensive book on the subject. From the drama of eyewitnesses' verbatim accounts to the excitement of new perspectives and insights into a strange and often terrifying experience – it gets to grips with what is now the commonest encounter with the unknown in Britain. Read more below....













	ISBN 1 872883 92 3. March 2006. 275 x 175 mm, illustrated, paperback £16.95 Order it from www.hoap.co.uk Telephone 01509 880725 Email albion@indigogroup.co.uk








	What the book is about..... While I was driving down a lane in Gloucestershire one summer afternoon in 1995 a peculiar animal loped across the road in front of me. It was the height of a roe deer, but with a long tail that swept down towards the ground and up again in a loop. It was black, feline and smooth-coated, and it moved purposefully, vaulting easily up the steep bank with sinuous grace. Puzzled, I stopped at the place where it had disappeared into a cornfield, but saw no further sign of it. Gradually it dawned upon me what I could have seen. It was the panther-like animal invented - or so I had assumed until that moment - by the local newspapers. It was the 'Beast of Gloucester'. Mine was low-key compared to many people's dramatic encounters with big cats. Landscape gardener Colin Booth was busy trimming a hedge when a black panther, the size of his own Alsatian, emerged from it. They studied each other from a distance of twenty feet before the animal turned and strolled off, leaving Colin stunned. 'It was a beautiful creature, and had a profound effect on me', he said. 'I will remember it for the rest of my life.' It seems anyone can see one. The writer Auberon Waugh 'distinctly saw a black panther run across the fields in front of the house'. The actress Sarah Miles met one while walking her dog: 'I stifled a gasp of wonder as the sun rippled its early-morning light across the sleek and glossy back… shimmering with health'. Rock star Maurice Gibb was amazed to observe one crossing his garden, saying: 'I've been all over the world but I never thought I'd see one in Esher.' Mystery Big Cats is the story of my quest to get to the bottom of the stories of the 'Beast of Gloucester' and the other 'black panthers' and 'pumas' apparently at large in our countryside. My first discovery was the vast scale of the phenomenon. Every county in Britain, from Caithness to Cornwall, has recurrent spates of big cat sightings, wittily dubbed 'cat-flaps'. At a conservative estimate between two and three thousand people spotted a 'panther-like' or 'puma-like' big cat in our countryside last year. Probably more people have seen a big cat in English fields and pastures now than have ever seen a pig. As Fortean Times put it: 'A fleeting glimpse of an anomalous big cat is now the commonest brush with the unknown in Britain'. The conventional explanation is that these creatures are the descendants of pets released into the countryside by their owners in 1976 when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act made it too expensive to keep big cats. But a closer examination reveals its inadequacies: only three people have claimed to have done this, yet such releases would have had to have occurred on a vast - even lunatic - scale to populate the whole country, including inaccessible islands like the Isle of Mull. Secondly, there have been no bodies of big cats found alive or dead, despite intensive hunts over many decades. Thirdly, while about a quarter of these animals have sandy-brown fur similar to a puma's, the remaining big cats reported are jet-black. This, I realised, is the central conundrum - for the only big cat with a black variant is the leopard. Melanistic (black) leopards occasionally crop up among litters of conventionally spotted leopard cubs; such animals are popularly termed 'black panthers', and are valuable precisely because they are uncommon. Yet while many hundreds of these rare, black leopards are apparently at large in our island, no normally-spotted leopard has ever been reported by a witness. The more evidence I studied - and there was plenty in the form of photos, video footage, sheep kills, pawprints, carcasses in trees, and so on - the more other anomalies in these creatures' colours, shapes and behaviour came to light. There was no doubt that they exist - the testimonies of knowledgeable, reliable eyewitnesses create a vivid picture of Britain's mysterious and beautiful felines - but it seemed these were not entirely conventional leopards or pumas. The question therefore remained, what are they and where have they come from? With the orthodox explanations overturned, I set about investigating the phenomenon in new contexts, searching for clues in the cultures of other places and times. Could they be, for instance, kin to the spectral 'Black Dogs' of folklore? I discovered our mystery felines have been with us in history for far longer than I had imagined. And, to my surprise, I found the only way of reconciling all the contradictory evidence surrounding them was to look at them in a completely new way - by means of a perspective suggested by the Ancient Greeks. It seems Britain's big cats resemble the curious creatures for which modern British culture has no exact pigeonhole, but which were familiar to the Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus, who called them daimones, in English 'daimons' (NB, not demons). They are intermediate beings, half of this world and half of another - an ambiguity confusing to our modern minds, but as familiar to our own ancestors in Britain as the Greeks. Was it possible to look at our mystery big cats through Iamblichus's spectacles, and say that perhaps they are our native daimons, returned from history and folklore to live quietly alongside us, gradually becoming more noticeable? With so much evidence proving them to be preternaturally elusive creatures, I could not resist exploring the idea that these creatures might equate to the daimons of old, but in new guises perhaps - as black or golden big cats. If such guises had been designed specifically to grip the attention of 21st century urbanised people they could not have succeeded better, as the emotive vocabulary of eyewitnesses testifies: these animals are 'beautiful', 'stunning', 'impressive', 'shocking', 'powerful', 'graceful', and 'unnerving'. The freshness and drama of eyewitnesses' verbatim accounts reveal Britain today as a mistier, more mysterious place than any African rain forest - and what I found there had unexpected implications for the way Western civilisation looks at the world.













	Order it from www.hoap.co.uk Telephone 01509 880725 Email albion@indigogroup.co.uk