Just to make a point since most people get things wrong or do not know what was going on behind the scenes.
"Felicity" the Cannich puma captured in the early 1980s was not a solitary puma.
As noted in my book (Red Paper 2025) I was in regular correspondence with Arthur Cadman a well known naturalist as well as a man involved in the planning of many post World War II forests in England and Wales. Arthur had been observing a group of pumas for several years and told me in a letter that an older female in that group was getting old and he thought she might be shot or tapped "soon" -and he was.
"Pumas are solitary animals" is not necessarily a correct statement. Two pumas from Wales that were under study met up frequently and not just during breeding season. Puma can live happily together if they have to and if they grew up in captivity together they tend to stick close and their offspring will learn from that behaviour.
We see rescued puma living together peacefully (4-5 in a group) with no conflict even when a new member to the group is slowly introduced.
One of the first modern era (1970s) sightings of a puma on the Welsh borders was by a nurse who use to love visiting the puma at Chester Zoo. She wrote to me back in the early 1980s that she was in no doubt that what she observed very close to (she called her young daughter back to the car over safety concerns) on a family day out was a puma. However, she was mystified by the smaller "Sphynx-like cat that was spotted" that came up behind the puma. I sent her a photo of a juvenile photo with no information and she identified it as the smaller cat -Chester had never had young puma.
That was pre 1976 and the semi mythical release of non native cats in the UK.
Puma were kept as pets by house wives -in the 1920s there was the Surrey puma hunt one night for one that had broken loose. That account I came across while trawling through newspaper archives for something else -I double checked the date as "A Surrey Puma Hunt" sounded more 1960s/1970s and I thought I had the wrong newspaper and date!
Puma have been in the UK since America was a colony and fauna was sent to England. However, most puma originated from Central-South America including black ones. That is significant in that we know that there are black puma in the UK and all of the experts (X=the Unknown and "spurt" is a drip under pressure) will tell you black puma are more likely in Central and South America. This despite all the hunting and other books pre 1900 (that they have never read because dogma is easier to recite) giving matter-of-fact accounts of black puma in North America. These are all dismissed (again without going to the source) with the Knowledge of Idiocy as being mistaken identifications "they saw an escaped leopard" or "It was a jaguar". You see, people who have hunted local animals for 'sport' or have observed them since childhood such as native tribes are dumb and have no idea what they have seen and killed because they are not sat in a comfortable chair with a PhD in spouting dogma.
One senior zoologists was within 100 yards of one in good lighting conditions and checked every diagnostic feature -this man had also been involved in work studying puma in Canada so he knew what one looked like.What did a biologist say in response? "Oh he saw a leopard but dismissed that idea because he didn't want to think of those being in the UK so said puma". I repeated that response and the zoologist was quite willing to go over his sighting and qualifications with the biologist. He even gave his phone number. FOUR times I tried to get the biologist to contact the man but an excuse every time. I later learnt that he was a "MAFF/DEFRA expert witness" and as we all know MAFF/DEFRA do not believe in these sightings (even by their own people).
Not everything started in or after 1976 and what you read online (does anyone read books now?) or in the old cryptozoology books including Janet and Colin Bord and their Alien Animals book along with those by Di Francis are often quoted or referred to as being factual. They are not. The nicest thing that I can write about the Bords book is that it is cryptozoological/supernatural "faff" with the odd fact. Francis I spoke to a number of times and her knowledge of any type of cat can be called poor or eccentric at best.simply regurgitated inaccuracies for the most part.
We are dealing with cats that have adapted and do not act 100% like the cats of the forests and plains that feature in documentaries. Making a map of sightings when many sound like mis-identifications or fake does not help. These cats are not confined to one small geographical era and that just does not seem to get through to people.
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MAFF -=Ministry of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food DEFRA its successor -Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs
Before I am criticised for not writing "pumas" as a plural: The plural of puma is pumas, though puma can also be used as a plural form, especially in formal writing or when referring to the animal as a general species (like 'sheep' or 'deer'). Most commonly, you'll see and hear pumas when talking about multiple individuals.
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