Mystery Cat Sighting Near River Findhorn
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 4th, 2009
Horses spooked by mystery cat
By Tanya McLaren, Forres Gazette, UK
Published: 04 February, 2009Two Forres women have been raising a few eyebrows with their account of a rather unusual animal they saw in fields a couple of miles out of the town.
Jan Munro and Jo Greenland were feeding their horses in fields near Dalvey House, on the outskirts of Forres, at about 3pm on Sunday, January 25 when the four horses reacted to something they saw at the edge of the fields. The women looked around and were amazed when they saw a black cat-like creature emerging from the woodlands which surround the fields.
“All of a sudden my horse, Jenkins, span round on me,” said Ms Greenland. “The other horses all fled down the field.”
She said that both she and her friend were amazed, and went after it to try to get a better look at the creature, which she described as “black and slinky” and about the same size and build as a greyhound.
The animal, which was in a wooded area by the Muckle Burn, bounded off when the women approached.
“I don’t know what it was, but it was about the height of a small Labrador,” said Ms Greenland. “It struck me that it was really, really, long, black and very shiny, with a long tail.”
The field is about a mile as the crow flies from Culbin Forest, and another mile from the River Findhorn. Pheasants, rabbits and the occasional deer are often spotted in the area.
Big cat sightings are not unusual in the North-east, and a source close to the ‘Gazette’ has previously reported two sightings of a creature at Grange Green, just over the river from where the animal was spotted last week.
There have been further reports by individuals from around the wider Forres area over the past few years, claiming to have sighted a black creature at various locations, including the Grantown Road, on the back road to Dallas, near the Mannachie estate, and around the Chapletonmoss area.
Reports usually described the animal as muscular and “Labrador-like”, and referred to its loping gait, dark colouring and long tail.
Ms Greenland, who works as a veterinary assistant at a Forres practice, said that it definitely was not a dog.
“There had been reports of a Labrador missing in the Forres area,” she said.
“It wasn’t anything like that. It was more like a female greyhound, but whatever it was, it was very pretty.”
Ms Munro, who is married with two children and lives in Forres, said that whatever it was, it wasn’t a dog, and she would love to see it again.
The women said that although it was daylight when they saw the animal, they would not be going down the fields alone in the dark, and were looking forward to the lighter nights.
Local wildlife expert Roy Dennis said that he was always a bit sceptical about these reports, and would not believe that there was a ‘puma-like’ cat about unless he saw it with his own eyes.
However, he said that there had been numerous sightings of animals which he believed to be hybrids of wild cats.
He said that a hybrid could easily be black, and he believed that this was the case.
“The trouble is that black animals always appear to be larger than they really are,” he added. It would be a melanistic wild cat – i.e. a black hybrid.”
He said that the area where the creature was spotted would be ideal for a wild cat, with the cover provided by woodland, plenty of prey, shelter and water.
“There were a lot more sightings in 1974 after the introduction of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act,” said Mr Dennis. “This meant that a lot of people who had tame exotic cats were no longer allowed to keep them, and they just released them into the wild.”
A local farrier told the ‘Forres Gazette’ that he spotted a similar “black cat-like” creature a few weeks ago in the Dallas area when he was driving along the road.
“I saw it walking along by the road,” he said. “When the van approached it jumped over a wall and ran away.”
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
