 URL big cats are on the loose in britain and breeding their way towards record numbers a monitoring group has claimed the british big cats society said it has received more than NUMBER reports of animals including pumas black panthers leopards and so called fen tigers over the past NUMBER months and while it admits that many sightings are of nothing more exotic than the average moggy it claims to have firm evidence that the majority are real society founder daniel bamping told bbc news online he could cope with the critics and doubters adding i was a sceptic i thought it was in the same realm as the loch ness monster but it s not they are really out there cats with cubs mr bamping said there have been reports of big cats from every corner of the country big cat reports hotspots include scotland and gloucestershire january NUMBER kent man clawed by suspected lynx november NUMBER farmer reports animals mauled by big cat april NUMBER lynx captured in north london NUMBER puma like cat attacks horse in wales this weekend alone i have had sightings from wales the scottish borders kent the west midlands devon somerset and wiltshire he said the society claims some of the big cats are breeding with domestic animals but mr bamping said others particularly lynx and puma probably exist in sufficient numbers to breed among themselves we have had sightings of cats with cubs he added trigger camera the society claims to have evidence proving the cats existence including photographs paw prints sheep kills and hair samples but it knows it will have to do even more to convince a sceptical public that it is not spinning them a shaggy cat story a national trigger camera project is planned which the society hopes will provide footage to prove the existence of the big cats mr bamping said the idea is that the cat will walk past the camera and take a picture of itself like dogs the society believes many of the sighting are of pets released into the wild or their descendants its spokesman danny nineham said in the NUMBERs and NUMBERs people had big cats like leopards as pets and they used to walk them like dogs but in NUMBER when the dangerous wild animals act came into force people released their cats because they did not want to pay for a licence put them down or take them to a zoo yahoo groups sponsor NUMBER dvds free s p join now URL to unsubscribe from this group send an email to forteana unsubscribe URL your use of yahoo groups is subject to URL 