By Tim Binnall
A British woman was so astonished by the sight of a monstrous-looking feline spotted in a field near her home that she phoned the police about the worrisome creature. According to a local media report, the unsettling sighting occurred late last month in the village of Deenethorpe. "It looked too big for a domestic cat," witness Mel Barnes explained, recounting how "I was so shocked by what I was seeing I had to run back in the house for my phone. It was 15 feet away from me." Looking back on the experience, like many witnesses to extraordinary events, she mused, "you had to be there."
Fortunately, thanks to her quick thinking in the moment, Barnes managed to film some of the sighting with her cell phone. In the footage (featured below), a rather large feline can be seen slowly stalking through the field outside her home. No doubt expecting the scene to be dismissed by skeptics as simply an inordinately large house pet out for a stroll, she insisted that "I know what a domestic cat looks like and I wouldn't have darted into the house to get my phone just for a moggy. I have never in my life seen what I suspect looked like a panther - and will probably never see one again."
In a testament to her belief that the creature in question was a possibly ferocious feline, Barnes dutifully reported her sighting to police. While local authorities confirmed that they had received a call from "a member of the public who believed they had seen a large cat," they did not indicate that any investigation into the situation or search for the animal was launched. Barnes' account would appear to be the latest in a series of sightings in that particular region of Britain over the years, where the resident mystery feline has come to be known as the 'Beast of Rutland' for the county where the encounters have occurred.