THERE have been two more sighting of a panther-like cat — one of them in Nettlebed High Street.

Jane Alexander was up early on Monday morning as her husband had to take a taxi to the airport.

She said: “At 4.15am my pet dog started barking and going crazy. He carried on for about 25 minutes which was just not like him.

“I looked out of the window and saw this very large, black cat. It prowled up and down outside our window for about 15 minutes until the taxi arrived, which scared it off.”

Mrs Alexander said it most definitely wasn’t a dog. “It was black, with a lovely long tail. It really was very attractive. I am in no doubt that it was some sort of extremely large cat. “I didn’t know there had been another sighting until a friend of mine suggested it could have been the panther that was mentioned in the Standard.”


The previous day it had been spotted just two miles from Nettlebed.

A 24-year-old woman spotted a similar creature on the A4130 Nettlebed to Crowmarsh Road by the turning for Oakley Wood.

Shelley Atkins was a passenger in a car being driven by a friend from the Crowmarsh direction when the cat dashed across the road in front of them at 9.45am on Sunday.

Miss Atkins, who lives in Cholsey, said. “It came from the right hand side and moved so fast that if I had blinked I would have missed it.

“It kept very low to the ground and disappeared into a field. I remember it had this very long tail. It was black and about the size of a Labrador dog — but it was definitely some kind of big cat.”

Miss Atkins, who up until recently had been working as a nanny, was unaware of the other sighting in the area. She went on to the Standard’s web site to see if there had been other sights.

“I was quite shocked when I found out cats like this had been seen earlier,” she said.

On Tuesday morning last week, Nigel Spiers spotted what he believes could have been a panther on Greys Road near to Highlands Farm.

It brings the number of sightings of the “wild cat of the Chilterns” to 12 in the last 11 years. They have previously been reported at Goring, Stoke Row, Fawley, Ipsden, Woodcote, Wargrave, Harpsden, Cookley Green, Nuffield and Binfield Heath.

Paul Westwood, who monitors sightings of big cats in the country, said it was possible they had escaped from a private collection.

Published 01/06/09