A SIGHTING of a ‘big black cat’ was reported just outside of Okehampton at the weekend.

The large creature was seen by a Bristol woman, Clare, who was driving down to Bude on Saturday morning. She described the cat as larger than a retriever, with a long tail, who crossed the road behind her car.

Clare had been taken off the A30 before Okehampton by her car’s sat nav and was driving along a main road with woodland either side, north of Okehampton. Not familiar with the area, Clare said she didn’t know exactly where she was but believed it was around 10 minutes before she drove into Okehampton.

She caught a glimpse of the animal while looking in her rear view mirror and couldn’t quite believe what she had seen.

‘I just didn’t expect it,’ she said. ‘I looked into my mirror and said to my husband “did you see that?” but it had gone. It was bigger than a retriever and had a long tail and was walking across the road diagonally in a slow, calm prowl — like a lion would walk. It was not what I expected to see!

‘It was all a bit of a blur and I was trying to think of what else it could have been. I know what I saw — I was trying to make reason of it but it was well and truly a big black cat. It was so unreal.’

Clare said it was the shape of a house cat and was very sleek and muscular. She said she had been subjected to jokes from her family since the sighting but she was worried about it wandering into a nearby village and possibly hurting somebody.

This is not the first time the Times has received reports of big cats sightings in West Devon. Previous reports include a possible ‘puma’ in Milton Abbot in 2008 and in Tavistock in 2012, a large black cat sighting in Grenofen, near Tavistock, in 2009 and a number of sightings of large cats in the Okehampton area several years ago.

Danny Bamping, from the British Big Cats Society, based in Plymouth, said he wasn’t surprised by the sighting as the Okehampton area was a bit of a ‘hotspot’ for big cats.

He said: ‘There have been quite a lot of sightings over the years in the Okehampton area because of where it is in relation to the moors. It seems to be an area where the cats pass through. We had one reported to us earlier in the spring not too far away from Okehampton.

‘Around 75 percent of the sightings reported to us are of big, black cats. They are out there, we’re just trying to figure out what they are.’

Danny said that what Clare saw wouldn’t have been a puma or a lynx as pumas are not black in colour and lynx’s don’t have long tails.

He said not to worry about any danger to the public as the cats are quite ’elusive’ and they wouldn’t attack unless they were provoked. He said they tend to stay away from humans.

Danny has been researching big cat sightings for the last 23 years and collates his information to work out where they are going at certain times of the year, how many there are and if they are breeding. Sightings can be reported through his website www.britishbigcats.org