Big Cat Conversations

Charlie our guest recounts 6 months of his life at the age of 9 back in 1973-74. Around his house in Ayrshire his family lived alongside a female big black cat, seen active in fields and woods and at…

Our first guest Malcolm was an arch sceptic on big cats being wild in Britain. Then one night driving home in 2011 he encountered a big black panther on the lane outside his property in Herefordshire…

Secrets of the hoax – real & imagined beasts

Our first guest Simon Lea had two close encounters with a large black panther at his farmholding in Oxfordshire. He later created the life-size metal panth…

Our first guest Hugh Williams recounts his close encounter with a big cat on a Worcestershire hillside. He also runs the Mysteries of Mercia website which explores quirks of history and folklore in t…

Cat Fight is the new novel from author Kit Conway which centres around big cat encounters in Kent, published in the UK in May and the US in June 2025. We speak to Kit about how Big Cat Conversations …

John explores the wild forests and farmland of his local Scottish borders area.  

It’s a sparsely populated region where black panthers and lynx are quietly discussed by some of the locals.  John take…

John met a “black panther” during his evening dog walks four times in 1996 in Staffordshire. On the first occasion he was confronted directly by the cat at close range. As the predator was poised, th…

Bonus feature - British wolverines?

Our first guest Darren was asked to despatch a troublesome fox in south Wales in 1998. In the snowy conditions he actually saw a puma though his gun sights – he re-…

Andrea is a podcast listener in Victoria, Australia. She didn’t expect to experience big cats on her land. But she explains how events and sightings have indicated she has visiting pumas, which seem …

We return to Cumbria for latest news of the mother and cub black leopards, being experienced by Liz on nearby land to her property. In autumn and winter sightings Liz has noticed longer fur develop o…

Two retired police officers report their big cat encounters and incidents, including black leopards & lynx. We conclude the episode with comments on the January 2025 lynx release & capture saga from …

Our end-of-year extended episode features Mandy from Worcestershire and Jon from neighbouring Herefordshire.

Mandy explains the events which led to her setting-up a big cats Facebook group in Worceste…

Tommy had two sightings of black panthers in the north of Exmoor as a teenager in the 90s.  His first viewing was of a mother guiding a small cub, which made a lasting impression on him. 

Tommy recoun…

Liz describes several encounters with a black leopard visiting the farmyard where she and her husband feed the farm cats. She has been watched and advanced on by the large cat and is now fully alert …

Craig our guest returns after episode 72 when he re-lived his Exmoor big cat encounters in the 1980s.

Now based in Herefordshire, Craig explains the big cat reports and potential activity occurring in…

Our first guest Graham recounts a close encounter with a large black cat on the Isle of Skye during one of his fishing trips. We discuss how a cat like a black leopard could have arrived on Skye and …

In this Summer edition we discuss pumas encountered in the wild on the England & Wales border in the Wye Valley, but we also visit a special sanctuary for re-homed exotic pets, also in the Wye Valley…

Steve our guest trains his working gun dog, a springer spaniel every morning at dawn. We hear of four occasions when he’s encountered a large black cat in his local Cheshire countryside.  For one of …

Our first guest Richard recounts a sudden episode of big cat reports from his time as a local police officer in Wiltshire. One of the cases involved a threatened domestic cat.

In the second part we ca…

We hear from Andy and from Gail, the different witnesses mentioned by Nick on his farm in episode 109. Andy and Gail speak about their own various big cat incidents during their farm visits, and they…