By Tim Binnall
A Scottish farmer says he recently spotted a sizeable cat, which he likened to a puma, that dashed across the road in front of his car. According to a local media report, the sighting occurred last Friday evening as John Kirk and his wife were driving through the community of Grantown. To their amazement, as they passed a cemetery and an old gas station in the town, the couple saw "a very large black cat" cross in front of their vehicle. Describing the feline as being "about puma size," Kirk recalled that he and his wife were left wondering if the creature was an exotic big cat released by its owner, "having gotten too big to look after."
When he detailed their sighting on social media, Kirk said, "I was surprised by the amount of people who had also seen it lately around the outskirts of the town." To that end, not unlike a good ghost story, the account from Friday night inspired several others to come forward with their own tales of encountering a large black cat in the area. One possible explanation for the puzzling feline seen by so many witnesses is what is known as the Kellas cat, an interspecies hybrid of the Scottish wildcat and a domesticated cat. The creature was once considered merely an urban legend or, more aptly, a cryptid until finally being proven to exist in the 1980s.