The Beast of Ogmore

Alien Big Cats (or ABC's for short) have been on TV again this week. Sightings of large (usually black) cats never seem to diminish and yet no conclusive evidence has ever been produced which is of sufficient quality to determine one way or another whether there is a real large predator presence in the UK.

I can remember working on a site a few years ago where a welder called Lyn was telling me a tale of the Monster of Margam (whatever). It involved a shredded deer, eyes glowing in the headlights of a land rover and a call to the ministry. When he called the ministry to follow up the incident they denied all knowledge of ever recovering the body of the deer.

I told a colleague about the conversation to which he replied, "Him? We call him Lyn Christian Anderson."

What's this got to do with a Shihtpom? Well, there are so many cross breeds of varying degrees of size, shape, colour and, lets face it, fashionable cuteness, available for purchase at any given time, many of them end up dumped and left to fend for themselves until a charity can find them and rehabilitate them. These fashionable crossbreeds are still a few hundred pounds to buy and yet this doesn't count for much either when the decision to abandon them is made. I bet the same gits would never treat their plasma screen TV's like that.

Forestry areas are a prime spot for the dumping of anything. Fly tipping is a huge problem in the countryside and unwanted pets could be left in this environment and not be discovered for weeks. In the right conditions and at a distance many of these dogs could be mistaken of a big cat and paw prints are seldom clear enough for absolute identification.

Witnesses are often adamant that they have seen a large cat. Who knows, some of them may be correct. One of these days......