ABCs: When and What April 17, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
ABCs (alien big cats) is the useful acronym given to descriptions of exotic felines that allegedly live wild in the British and Irish countryside. Between April 2004 and July 2005 the British Big Cats society recorded some 2,123 sightings of ABCs from pumas to lynxes. What is going on here? Well, there are a couple of possibilities. The first is that a significant number of wild felines have escaped from captivity and now live on that moor or on top of that hill. It is even possible that some of these rogues have met up and started to breed. The second possibility is that we are seeing a series of misunderstandings on the part of the general public: this has, in turn, led to some Fortean types suggesting that actually this is just the continuance of shuck (the phantom black dogs that used to haunt the British countryside).
The first explanation is not as silly as it may sound. Several escapees have made it out into the British countryside and made a home there including wallabies and kangaroos. These populations rarely survive long, but some have made it through two or three generations. There is also straightforward factual evidence that some ABCs really were large felines. ABCs have been photographed and on occasion killed or captured. The problem here is that can Britain’s presumably tiny population of genuine wild feline (are there perhaps five or six?) really explain all the sightings noted above: 2000 plus for one year, 2004/2005?
The other explanation is even more daring. Some have assumed that (with a few exceptions) all the sightings are of a supernatural being. There is a problem here, of course. It is not that supernatural creatures do not exist: because whether they do or do not clearly some people are wired to have supernatural experiences. Rather, it is the date. The first big waves of ABC sightings start, apparently, in the 1960s. (Here also is a very early example). If phantom cats are part of our supernatural fauna where the hell were they before then?
I have so far been writing this post very charily. I have only a passing interest in ABCs, but I know something about British supernatural bogeys and cats just don’t really feature that much. There are dogs, there are calves, there are rabbits… But people rarely see a luminous cat strolling down the lane beside them. Yes, it is true that cats are always appearing in witch trials, but, and here is the problem, these are not phantom cats, they are almost always real ones. So are there no supernatural cats? No, there are a few, but this is definitely one of the less common forms that the supernatural takes. And even when you get shape changers out in the countryside, they very rarely become cats.
So there are broadly speaking two possibilities. (i) ABCs are real creatures; (ii) ABCs are often ‘the supernatural’ but there has been a change in how we see these creatures; instead of dogs we now see cats. Nothing that strange with the second point given that fairies and ghosts have changed notably every century since records began, but what have we done to deserve cats, massive or otherwise? And why are these cats so rarely supernatural in their behavior? You don’t often hear of wild cats walking through gates and the like, as phantom dogs were always doing. These creatures are also limited to parts of the country where big cats would perhaps go, rather than the areas where black dogs used to be seen. I, then, would guess that ABCs are a real natural phenomenon, based on some few physical specimens and word-of-mouth. But I’d be the first to admit that this doesn’t quite explain 2000 plus sightings in one year. Other views: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
Ruth in OK, 24 April 2018: Okay, I’ve said this before on another site that was positing what these creatures might be, or if they are even real, that a percentage of these sightings are more than likely real. Considering there is always some fool who thinks exotic pets are great, or is homesick for a sport involving non-native species, or just likes some of these things and thinks they can control them. They may have been released into the wild or escaped. One of the islands in the Straights of Juan de Fuca is over run with critters because someone missed being able to hunt them while he was stationed there and had some imported. Gee, population explosion anyone? (Can’t remember if it’s possums or raccoons or something similar.) Big cats like mountain lions (cougars, catamounts, etc., whatever you want to call them) can survive and thrive in the climate there. They survive all over the US whether the Wildlife Department wants to admit it or not! There are melanistic varieties, black as opposed to the usual tawny color, and I can just see some blockhead importing one for the “I’m a real he-man” attitude of owning a big cat. Can you guess my opinion of this particular species of human…idiot…since I really try not to use the language I’m thinking in public. They should be flogged and flayed, maybe even drawn and quartered, or, better yet, locked in a small cage with some of these hungry beasties. Way to screw up and wipe out an eco system! Some of the sightings may be something else, can’t say what as I wasn’t there, but I’d bet my favorite cookbook some of them are real live cats. Farmers beware, also smallish pets and children, their diet is not particular.
