Big cats are prowling woodland in the Cotswolds, claim a couple who say they’ve captured one of the predators on a trail camera.
For more than a decade, Andy Rule, 53, and his wife Claire, 50, have been tracking wild big cats.
They set up trail cameras in woodland near Nympsfield, Gloucestershire years ago in the hope of snapping a beast.
Now they claim their work has paid off as they have pictured one of the animals in the woods which they believe is sniffing the ground.
Andy, a former carer from Stroud, said: “We’ve had three cameras over half a mile that have picked up glimpses, in that area.
“What I believe [the cat] doing is sniffing the ground.
“Between the first image of the tail and the side profile there was 53 seconds.
“If it had been a video, it would have caught it moving more fluently.
“I believe this cat we’ve seen now seems to be showing quite a bit of grey so I think it’s a bit older.
“Most of the images we’ve caught are pure luck because the cats are scooting around the edges of them.”
The couple took an interest in the ‘big cat’ phenomenon back in 2012 after the death of two deer although Claire has been fascinated by the beasts since she was a child.
Andy said: “We would spend our time off from caring for our son trying to get sightings of the black cat.
“We’ve been catching odd images all the way through.
“But in 2020, when I lost my leg, we weren’t able to do much with it.
“Once we got the care for our son, we were spending 55 hours a week in the field walking to all the cameras and checking regular routes for any sightings.
“Each six weeks or so you’d go to a different set of cameras and then spend weeks looking through thousands of pictures.”
