British big cats, also referred to as ABCs (Alien, or Anomalous, Big Cats), phantom cats and mystery cats, are Felidae which are not native to Britain and are reported to inhabit the British countryside. These sightings are often reported as "panthers", "pumas", or "black cats". Their existence is unproven, but many suggestions exist to explain how these animals might have come to inhabit Britain, including that they are animals released after the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 came into force, or that they are surviving Ice Age fauna.
Read more about British Big Cats: Reported British Big Cat Sightings, Government Involvement, Mythological Explanation
Famous quotes containing the words british, big and/or cats:
“These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt if such things ever were,—if our bold ancestors who settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrowheads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and unreal.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... my mother ... piled up her hair and went out to teach in a one-room school, mountain children little and big alike. The first day, some fathers came along to see if she could whip their children, some who were older than she. She told the children that she did intend to whip them if they became unruly and refused to learn, and invited the fathers to stay if they liked and she’d be able to whip them too. Having been thus tried out, she was a great success with them after that.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“At middle night great cats with silver claws,
Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,
Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds
With long white bodies came out of the air
Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)