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ABC: Various explanations have been advanced for sightings of Anomalous

IT'S more than 150 years since the first recorded sighting of a big cat in Dorset. Still, the possibility of large feline beasts continues to intrigue us and every few months a sighting prompts another cat flap as enthusiasts take to the trailways in search of a puma-like creature, or a panther hybrid.

Then again, maybe it's an outsize lynx, a very big badger, or a supernatural sighting?

The theories are almost as numerous as the sightings and a compelling new book manages to round up some enticing explanations, as well as providing a gazetteer of sightings and encounters with Anomalous Big Cats (ABCs) over the past decade or so.

Roaring Dorset! (Roving Press, £4.99) is published on September 1 with a public launch at the Dorset County Show the following Saturday where author and big cat enthusiast Merrily Harpur, from Cattistock, will be signing copies.

The book chronicles some 223 sightings across the county and includes several photographs of unexplained black creatures in fields.

With accounts drawn from local newspapers and many first-hand interviews, Merrily goes to great lengths to stay objective and actually sets out the arguments both for and against the various theories that would explain the ABCs.

She also notes that various police hunts and even an army stake-out have failed to capture a single creature, either in Dorset, or anywhere else in the UK, where tales of big, panther-like animals, brown puma-type creatures and other unexplained felines are commonplace.

Even the most remote parts of the British Isles are not far from human habitation and for all the gamekeepers, hunters, ramblers, military personnel, wildife vigilantes, travellers and loners who seek out-of-the-way places, not a single big cat has been reported shot, captured, snared or run over.

Even the explanations put forward for the existence of big cats have major flaws.

Some say they are descended from the travelling menageries of Victorian showmen, the biggest of which, Wombwells, passed through Dorset a number of times between 1855 and 1868.

Others claim that they can be traced to the captive animals released in the wake of the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act that outlawed the keeping of unlicenced wild creatures.

The trouble is, there has been a handful of ABC sightings on the Isle of Mull, which has never had a zoo or private menagerie and is a good 30 minutes by ferry from the mainland.

And yet the sheer number of sightings and encounters from Dorset alone constitutes fairly compelling evidence for something we can't explain living in our back yard.

One idea is that ABCs are related to pre-Ice Age big cats, but while it's true that lynxes could be found on these shores until Roman times, if not beyond, there's no explanation why these cats should have evolved and yet similar species - wolves for instance - died out.

Equally, cross-species breeding in nature usually produces infertile offspring - mules, for instance, are born sterile. However, the Scottish wildcat and household cat have been known to mate successfully.

More esoteric theories suggest that the ABCs could be materialised apparitions such as the tulpas, or thought-forms, of Tibetan Buddhist practice; or that the cats could be daimons (not demons, you understand) from long-standing folklore, similar to the likes of Puck, Will o' the Wisp or the barghest, a large black dog from the north of England.

In mythology such creatures are often transient - partly of this world and partly of another - which would certainly help explain the various anomalies surrounding our big cat population.

Merrily Harpur's Roaring Dorset tome offers much for big cat fanatics and sceptics alike.

7:00pm Wednesday 20th August 2008

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