Black Cat is Kitty Cat?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 27th, 2005
In a breaking news story out of Australia, a Talangi researcher named Bernie Mace (who told the media there that he’s been researching mystery cat reports for thirty years), is quoted as having a new theory.
Mace earlier had said the black cat that Melbourne deer hunter Kurt Engel shot in June 2005 was a melanistic puma. Black pumas are unverified in North and South America, let alone in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other reported areas, such as Germany, where they have been sighted. A mystery felids, a black catlike cryptid, nevertheless, is frequently encountered in areas of unknown large cat accounts.
In news published on Friday, October 28, Mace is telling the media that the black cat killed in Gippsland, near Dargo, may have been a "super-sized feral cat."
The researcher notes further analysis of the long tail that was kept by Engel is taking some time because a Canberra university is requiring nearly $10,000 to analyse DNA from that physical bit of evidence. Fundraising by Mace to obtain that amount is slowing the entire verification process.
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.
I have studied the cat family for 50 years and also have done illustration and fine art of the subject professionally. I have been very close to several captive pumas and have pix to prove it. I saw the pix and could tell right off it was not a wild species of this region. As many people said, it’s a real big dark house cat. Maine coon cats get real big, although this isn’t one either. Cougars have a different body profile and a longer head. The cougar is making some headway back east, but it should at least look like one. Black, tawny or white. A puma has half dollar size pads, 4 on each track. Even an immature puma has much larger tracks than a domestic cat. It would be nice to think it was something other than a stray or roaming tom, but unless it’s an escaped exotic pet, my bet is it’s the “neighbor’s” cat.
Not to flog a dead horse here, but when you said “saw the pix and could tell right off it was not a wild species of this region”… thats kind of the point, there is no wild species of the region…. Australia has no ‘wild’ cat species, apart from the odd feral cat lurking around eating the helpless native fauna. Now, i belive that DNA evidence has proved that it is a massive feral cat, which in itself is kind of interesting, but just thought id let you know 🙂