An East Lothian woman has shared how she was stunned after she came across a 'big cat' lurking outside her work.
Lisa Elliot, 36, said she was shocked after seeing the large creature making its way across a field in the early hours of Monday morning (August 15.) Just finishing her nightshift, Lisa had been leaving the Tyneholm Stables care home at around 5.30am when she noticed the black shape moving through the grass.
Initially believing it was a baby deer, a longer look caused the Pencaitland mum to realise she was looking at something very different, and quickly took a couple of snaps.
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Speaking about her sighting of the 'puma-sized cat', Lisa told the Record neither her or her colleagues have ever seen anything like it before.
"I thought it was a baby dear to start with," Lisa explained. "I got up to the window and I thought 'oh my god, that's no deer'. It was huge!"
She continued: "It was just walking across the field - I've never seen anything like it before."
"I follow all these kinds of sightings because I find them quite interesting."
Although not expecting to see such an animal, Lisa said she is hoping to catch a glimpse again of the 'cat' in the future, with many others around the country reporting sightings over the years.
Not the first to have claimed to have spotted one, earlier this year a big cat expert mapped a reported 850 sightings in Scotland to try and get an insight into the animals.
Paul MacDonald says the group, Big Cat Sightings Scotland has received hundreds of reports of non-native species spotted across the country. He believes the animal Lisa spotted could be a wildcat hybrid, but he ruled out a puma or lynx due to the shape of the tail.
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He told the Record: "You could say it is a bit of a mystery.
"It is more like a wildcat hybrid but it is not in the location you would expect to find a wildcat which would be in the Highlands.
"A few years ago we went to check a carcass at Bannockburn. We took samples and sent the DNA to be analysed. Tests confirmed it was a wildcat hybrid. You wouldn't expect to find that in Bannockburn.
"There have been sightings of big cats in East Lothian and around the Pencaitland area but the details described as more akin to bigger cats.
"The tail of this particular cat is definitely not the tail of a puma or a lynx."
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