The Beast of Eastbourne: Woman spots ‘giant cat’ walking by her house
The Beast of Eastbourne: Woman spots ‘giant cat bigger than a Great Dane’ roaming the streets of seaside down
- Sandy Bawa saw something that looked like a big cat on her CCTV on Sunday
- The black cat-like creature appeared to walk past her home in Eastbourne
- She said it was different to the foxes she regularly sees walking by on her CCTV
- Have you seen this cat? Email emer.scully@mailonline.co.uk
A woman has claimed she spotted a cat ‘bigger than a Great Dane’ walking by her house when she looked back over her CCTV.
Sandy Bawa captured images of a black cat-like creature outside her home in Eastbourne just before 6am on Sunday morning.
She thought it was ‘some sort of wild cat’ and has been looking at her CCTV footage daily to try to see it again.
Ms Bawa told the Eastbourne Herald: ‘It’s bigger than a Great Dane dog and the face is like a cat.’
She added that it looked ‘very weak’ and she wasn’t afraid of it walking so close to her house.
Sandy Bawa captured images of a black cat-like creature (pictured) outside her home in Eastbourne just before 6am on Sunday morning
A photograph taken from the CCTV showed a black figure appear to walk along the path outside her seafront home.
She showed the footage to her friend Ann Newton-Mercial, who said she thought it might have been a horse when she first saw it.
‘It does look big. The wall in front of her house isn’t very large,’ she said.
It comes after a wildlife expert revealed there could be as many as 500 wild big cats roaming the UK.
A photograph taken from the CCTV showed a black figure appear to walk along the path outside her seafront home
Big cats have been spotted in different locations around the UK over the past twenty years
Rick Minter, who worked as a policy officer for the Countryside Commission and then the Countryside Agency for 18 years, said he believes there could be around 250 black leopards and 250 pumas in the wild.
There have been claimed sightings of big cats in the British countryside for decades, captured with blurry photographs, but there has been little evidence, The Times reported.
Overall, there have been more than 1,300 big cat sightings across the UK in the last 10 years.
Mr Minter said that, because of the consistency of sightings, lack of signs on inbreeding and skill at deer hunting, around 80 per cent of the reports he received were credible.
He said most of the witnesses and informants are reliable people, such as police officers and scientists.
On August 9, a large wildcat resembling a Savannah cat was caught on camera around 4pm wandering across Coldham’s Common in central Cambridge.
- Have you seen a big cat in the Eastbourne area? Email emer.scully@mailonline.co.uk
