No, this won’t be a grade school lesson or incoherent rhyme from a Dr. Suess book. We will discuss the phenomenon of Alien Big Cats (or ABCs in the Cryptid Research Field). These sightings occur from Europe to North America, and the cats range between all types of Big Cats. By definition, Big Cats are only a few species: lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars. They all have a special bone in their throat called a hyoid, which allows them to roar. How or why are these massive cats seen in places they shouldn’t be seen, or haven’t been, in centuries? Let’s discuss.
In the 1960s, it was very fashionable for well-off people to buy and house exotic pets. This ranged from emus, hippopotamuses, aardvarks, and even Big Cats. It still exists to a degree where legal — Mike Tyson was infamous for his tiger, and Michael Jackson had his pet chimpanzee named Bubbles. Big Cats were more appealing to some because they were dangerous, and some species have a reputation for eating humans when they feel like it. Two lions, known as the Tsavo Man-Eaters, reportedly consumed between 28 to 135 people, depending on who and when you asked. Stories like this one, and many others, contribute to the fear people have toward these animals, only intensifying the curiosity some people have about them.
In 2011, a man in Zanesville, Ohio, ended his life. Still, before he did so, he released every animal he had housed on his property, essentially unleashing a zoo on the unsuspecting town. The police responded by killing most of them, capturing only a small percentage. They reasoned that they resorted to this because they had nowhere near the number of animal control officers to capture them all. How many animals were there? 50 — 18 Bengal tigers, 17 lions, six black bears, three cougars, two grizzly bears, two wolves, a baboon, and a monkey. The state of Ohio enacted a law on January 1, 2014, preventing dozens of species from being owned as pets, largely due to this.
Many people reason that the Big Cat sightings are simply them escaping their confines to the freedom of nature or being let loose by an owner who can no longer afford or wants to take care of them. This same issue has happened in Florida due to the reptile and fish trades being largely unregulated. Some states still have no restrictions against pet ownership, including my home state of West Virginia. I saw an Alien Big Cat myself during the autumn of 2007. It terrified me so much that I didn’t return to the woods for a long period of time. To this day, I can still picture that encounter, and it’s why I decided to write this article. I want to know what they are or how they got there.
I heard tales from friends of mine of seeing these cats with cubs, and if so, the population is growing. If that is the case, a live one will eventually be brought in. If you talk to any of the local DNR, they say we don’t have resident Big Cats and that they are simply following the deer for food. They acknowledge that we do have the deer population to sustain them, yet won’t say they are staying here? I cannot understand why there is such hesitation. Are they afraid it would hurt the tourist market?
Other possibilities remain if the Alien Big Cats are not just released or escaped pets. Panthers are not a separate species but a melanistic variety of other big cats, like jaguars and leopards. Melanin is a pigment necessary to make darker colors happen in fur or skin. What witnesses could be seeing, including myself, is a melanistic mountain lion. According to academic records, a black mountain lion has never been killed in the wild or bred in a zoo. Another possibility is that black jaguars are coming up from Mexico. There have been a few official sightings of them roaming the wilds of Arizona and Texas, and Big Cat hunting ranges can sometimes stretch for hundreds of miles, so to me, I don’t believe it is too much of a stretch to say they are wandering that far for the food supply. Until the 1800s, jaguars were all over the southern half of the US, so we know they could still thrive here.
While the skeptics dismiss all the sightings as scared people in the woods seeing stray house cats, I have to argue against that for my own. I have a black house cat now. His name is Spooky, and I call him my “mini panther”. He is quite large for a house cat but is still nowhere near the size of what I saw. I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods, and I could tell if something was simply an ordinary pet.
To end this article, I will tell you of my own sighting.
It was the fall of 2007, and we were temporarily living with my aunt. I would go into the woods to get out of the noisy house for a while, and because it was the only place in that area I could get reception on my Motorola Razr. I’d go up there, never unarmed because of the black bear, hike briefly, then sit and enjoy nature. This time though, I noticed all the squirrels were going insane, barking alarms to one another from the treetops. I thought it was just me because they sometimes do that if you startle them. This time though, they just suddenly stopped. Any experienced outdoorsman, or hunter, knows that this means a real predator is nearby. I prepared myself for a possible black bear encounter, but I first saw a doe running across the hillside, maybe 100ft above me. It ran around the ridge, and I didn’t see it again. Moments later, I saw a black shape from the corner of my eye. It was moving slowly, taking its time. I thought to myself, there’s the bear. It moved along a thick patch of brush, then wandered to a grove of trees to my right. I turned and saw the black shape between the trees – then I saw the tail. It was cured into a J shape, hanging low to the ground. The creature had a large head, yellow eyes, and a pink tongue hanging from an open mouth. It turned to look at me, examined me for a few moments, then turned and walked over the hillside toward where the doe had run. Years later, I learned that mouth-opened gesture is how they taste the air for blood. I have concluded that I witnessed this creature about to eat its dinner.
My question to all of you is, have you also seen one? Now you know that you aren’t the only one. You can contact me by going to wildandweirdwv.com and clicking the Sighting tab to send us your report. We’d love to hear about it! We can also keep it confidential if you choose. Just remember, you’re not alone.