'Catfoot' Is Back: Coventry Police Say Residents Keep Reporting a Large Dark Cat Near Binley Woods

COVENTRY, England (Oct. 5, 2026): Most weeks, the update from Coventry’s Stoke and Wyken neighbourhood police team is about shoplifting arrests, vehicle crime patrols and how to lock up a bicycle. The one that went out in early October had all of that. And then, halfway down, it had something else.

“Although reports regarding nature and wildlife has been absent over the last few weeks,” the team wrote, “this week we have had various members of the public approach us again regarding a large black cat sighting, again in the Binley Woods area.”

The animal has a name by now. Locals call it “Catfoot.”

✓ What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

• The update. The Stoke and Wyken Neighbourhood Policing Team, part of West Midlands Police, said in a weekly community update that the large black cat “has now been seen by multiple eye witnesses and then reported to Officers whilst on patrol.” The team said it advises people each time to report sightings to the British Big Cats Society, and gave the society’s contact details.
• The description. “Residents have reported that they have seen ‘Catfoot’ numerous times during the late evenings whilst taking a walk,” the update said. “It has remained in the distance and appeared to be a large dark coloured animal of the feline variety, once it had been seen it had quickly darted off into the riparian environment,” meaning the land along a stream or river.
• The coverage. Coventry Live reported the update on Oct. 5, 2026, saying locals had told police they’d seen Catfoot “several times over the past week.”
• The advice. Police asked residents to “appreciate local wildlife responsibly,” not to approach any animal they think may be injured, escaped or dangerous, and to report it to the appropriate authorities. Photos, video and details of the time and place “can assist wildlife organizations in evaluating reports more effectively,” the team wrote. Animal-welfare concerns go to the RSPCA, and immediate threats to public safety go to the police.
• What hasn’t been published. No photo or video of the animal has been released, and the police team hasn’t said what it thinks the animal is.

? What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

• The sightings themselves. Everything known about Catfoot comes from residents’ accounts, as relayed by the police team. In the reports we read, no officer is described as having seen it.
• “Black panther.” Coventry Live’s coverage framed the animal as a possible black panther, the name commonly used for a leopard or jaguar with extra dark pigment. That’s the newspaper’s framing. The police update says only “a large black cat” and “a large dark coloured animal of the feline variety.”

How Catfoot got its name

October’s update wasn’t the first. On June 10, 2026, Coventry Live reported that the same police team had passed on residents’ accounts of a large cat in the Binley Woods area. That earlier update described “a large spotted cat,” and noted that Binley Woods lies just outside the team’s own patch, though officers patrol the surrounding area. It also recalled that a similar report had emerged in Warwickshire in April 2016.

Eleven days later, on June 21, Coventry Live reported that more residents had come forward. “Several witnesses, who asked not to be named, describe seeing a large cat-like figure moving through woodland and open fields after dusk,” a police spokesman said then. Locals, the spokesman added, had started calling the creature “Catfoot,” a nickname “inspired by its silent movements and elusive nature.” “Whether misidentification, escaped exotic pet, or something stranger,” the team wrote, “the legend of Catfoot appears to be growing.”

Then the reports went quiet for a while, as the October update acknowledged, before starting up again this autumn.

Britain’s big cats

Catfoot joins a long British tradition of “big cat” sightings, from the Beast of Bodmin Moor to dozens of local legends. In its June update, the police team repeated a common explanation for where such animals might have come from: big cats were kept as pets before 1976, and after the Dangerous Wild Animals Act became law that year, “it was rumoured that many owners released them into the wild.”

Despite decades of reports, Britain has no confirmed wild population of leopards, pumas or other large cats. Sightings often come down to scale: a big domestic cat, a dog or a fox seen at a distance at dusk can look very different from close up. That’s one reason the police team keeps asking for photos and exact times and places.

What’s next

With darker evenings coming, the police team ended its update with a reminder that daylight saving time ends in late October and that walkers in green spaces should stay visible. For anyone who does see Catfoot, the request is the same as it’s been since June: keep your distance, note the time and place, take a photo if you can, and report it.

Until someone does, Catfoot remains what it’s been all along: a shape in the distance on a late-evening walk, gone into the trees before anyone could get a better look.