According to our local newspapers a high country farmer intends to prove the existence of the mysterious black leopard that supposedly lives in mid-Canterbury, New Zealand. He has built a trap to capture the creature and wants to do DNA tests to prove one way or the other that the alien cat is fact rather than fiction.
What is an alien cat you ask? It’s actually large feline, such as a leopard or cougar, sighted in an area or country where it’s not indigenous. Many countries have sightings of alien cats including my home country of New Zealand, Britain, Australia, Finland, Denmark and Hawaii.
It was an article in the newspaper about sightings of this black panther in the South Island of New Zealand that first snared my attention a few years ago. Since the 1990s, witnesses have seen the big cat on several occasions, but a search by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry found no physical evidence to support the sightings.
And yet the alien sightings continue.
A big cat could certainly live happily in the area of Ashburton. The climate is suitable and food is abundant, ranging from birds and rabbits to deer and domestic livestock. As in the case of all alien cats (no matter what part of the world they’re sighted) skeptics want to know how they got there. They also want proof such as a carcass bearing bite or claw marks. Most sightings, they say, are of domestic cats or other animals.
Supporters of the alien cat stories state that big cats are secretive by nature. Sightings aren’t common in countries where they are native and many big cats are nocturnal, reducing the chances of eyewitness sightings.
Documented reports of alien cats in New Zealand are too numerous to ignore. One eyewitness said he and his wife looked down onto the river flat and saw the cat. It was a very large black cat, similar in size to his Golden Lab/Mastif cross with a long tail. Once it got wind of them, the cat disappeared smartly. Before he was skeptical, but seeing something with your own eyes is very definite.
Maybe it’s the romantic in me, but personally, I like to believe in alien cats. It’s certainly an interesting topic to debate, and the story about the black panthers stirred my imagination. I collect ideas and combined the panther story with one about a small New Zealand town called Middlemarch. If you follow my blog you already know the town has a severe shortage of women of marriageable age and they organized a dance to entice more young women to the area. My paranormal series called Middlemarch Mates was born from the marriage of these ideas. I am currently working on book nine in my feline shapeshifter series, which is available from Ellora’s Cave.
What do you think about alien cats? Fact or fiction?
