'It Was Like Thick Black Rope': A 5:15 a.m. 'Panther' Outside a Bedroom Window in the Cotswolds

UPPER RISSINGTON, England (mid-September 2026): Susan Bates had not long been back from a holiday, and she was still a bit jet-lagged. So at about 5:15 one morning in mid-September, she was awake and standing at her bedroom window, looking across the road at the allotments in her Cotswolds village.

“There’s a man-made track just across a green across from my house which is dotted with some thickets, and suddenly I saw what I thought to be a dog,” she told Gloucestershire Live. “It was about the size of a Labrador.”

She waited for its owner to appear behind it. “I thought it was a bit odd, someone out walking their dog that early in the morning.”

No one appeared.

? What’s claimed

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

• The disappearance. About 50 yards from her house, the animal went into the shrubs. “And then it came back out and it was completely side-on to me. As soon as it reappeared I realised it was not a dog at all.”
• The walk. “The way it was walking was very distinctive. The haunches were down a bit, like a cat.”
• The tail. “But it was the tail that got me. It was like thick black rope, long and slightly curled at the end.”
• Her verdict. “It looked like a classic, big jet-black panther. I can’t describe it as anything else.”
• How long. About 30 seconds, which she says was long enough. “It was strolling along at a leisurely pace, not in a hurry, like it didn’t have a care in the world. If it had been moving quickly or running I would have questioned myself.”
• A neighbor. Three or four days later, she says, a neighbor told her she’d also seen the animal while walking her dog. “It must have been in the area for two or three days, but I haven’t seen it since, so it has probably moved on.”

✓ What we know

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

• The witness. Bates, 74, spoke on the record to reporter Sarah Lumley. Her account ran on Oct. 13, about a month after the sighting.
• The place. Upper Rissington is a village on a former RAF airfield near Bourton-on-the-Water, in the heart of the Cotswolds.
• No picture. She didn’t get a photo. The paper ran a picture of the green where she saw the animal, and a stock photo of a black jaguar.
• The neighbor. The neighbor’s sighting is as Bates relayed it. Gloucestershire Live didn’t quote the neighbor directly.
• The food supply. “We do get a lot of little muntjac deer in those copses, so there’s probably a good food source there for them,” Bates said.
• The report. She passed her sighting to Frank Tunbridge, a Gloucester big-cat researcher who the paper says has followed big cats and wildlife for about 50 years.

The expert’s view

Tunbridge believes Britain has big cats, and says so plainly.

“The overwhelming evidence from across the UK now indicates that various forms of large predatory cats, including the secretive lynx (not classed as a Big Cat), are now established, and thriving on the plethora of small deer, rabbits, and ground nesting birds available to them.”

Source: Frank Tunbridge, to Gloucestershire Live, Oct. 13, 2026 (link (opens in new tab))

He also says they’re less fearsome than their reputation. “Like all predators their numbers are usually exaggerated, and are also often perceived as being dangerous by the media. In reality they, like most forms of our wildlife, avoid mankind at all costs.”

And he isn’t sure he wants the mystery solved. “What a fascinating subject, and one that has rolled along for decades now without a definite conclusion. I hope in some ways it stays like that, as otherwise these happy go lucky cats would be persecuted for no fault of their own!”

That’s his opinion. There’s no official confirmation of a breeding big-cat population anywhere in Britain.

The questions

Black dogs and black cats are both common in English villages, and at 5:15 a.m., across a green, in the half-light, size is hard to judge. Bates knows that. She thought it was a dog herself, until the tail. That long, thick, curled tail is the detail big-cat witnesses mention over and over, because most dogs and house cats don’t have one like it.

“I did have a moment of disbelief,” she said. “But I know I did see it. I just couldn’t believe my eyes.”