| LARGE CATS | |
| STATUS: Unknown | |
 Derek Whiteley |
‘Big cat’ sightings are reported sporadically in the local press, but none of these reports in the county has yet been backed up by hard evidence such as a photo, corpse, track, or other field signs. A large number of these reports, as elsewhere in the UK, refer to ‘large black cats’. In the wild, melanistic leopards (‘black panthers’) make up a tiny proportion of the total population and so far no-one has come with a convincing explanation for the apparent prevalence of escaped large black cats here, with extremely few, or no, records of ‘normal’ spotted leopards or typical brown pumas. Nor has anyone provided a satisfactory explanation for the origin of these large felines. An interesting feature of the ‘big black cat’ reports is their resemblance to old reports from the Peak District of ‘boggarts’, a kind of phantom black dog. The Kinder Boggart is a well-reported phenomenon and other examples were formerly reported from the Bradwell, Ashford, and Wirksworth areas. |