BIG CAT WHO FANCIED A HAM SANDWICH

Sunday January 22,2012

By Jon Coates

The Express

FOR A hungry panther in search of a delicious snack, where better to go than the village of Ham.

Residents living in the rural community were shocked to see a large black cat prowling the area in recent weeks.

It has now been blamed for the disappearance of three rare breed piglets from a farm in Ham, which is appropriately near Sandwich in Kent.

The creature appears to have a discerning palate. The free range Berkshire piglets are renowned for their ­flavour. A stable girl, who does not want to be named, said she was tending horses when the animals started to go “berserk”.

She then spotted the panther with a swollen belly in a neighbouring field.

She said: “The body was 4ft long and the tail was just as long. It looked quite fat, with its belly almost touching the ground and it had really chunky legs.” Kent Police confirmed they were investigating a reported sighting of a large black cat in the area on January 5 at about 1pm. It is the latest in a string of sightings reported to police and panther experts over the past year of a large black cat prowling Sandwich and the surrounding area.

Neil Arnold, of Kent Big Cat Research, said: “I had reported sightings around this area a couple of weeks prior to these piglets going missing. A woman had seen a black panther-like cat crossing the same road next to this farm.

“Sightings have also been made of a large black animal in a nearby field.”

The organisation received 189 sightings of big cats last year, of which 57 per cent related to panthers, 28 per cent to pumas, 11 per cent to lynx and four per cent to jungle cats.

A 5ft long black cat was seen on the prowl in marshes near Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey, off the north Kent coast, last month. The area is popular with film crews – a new version of Dickens’ Great Expectations starring Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter was filmed in the area just weeks before the big cat sighting. A version of The Sweeney starring Ray Winstone and Hayley Atwell was also filmed there. In recent weeks a panther has been linked to two attacks on deer in the Cotswolds.

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