The green hills and fields blurred into one singular shape as Aimee Ranieri drove down the country road.
It was a warm sunny day at the end of May and the wind was whistling through her car’s open windows as she travelled down the B1120 road. The Suffolk countryside was quiet and peaceful. There wasn’t another vehicle or person in sight.
Which is when Aimee saw it.
She hit her breaks. Standing there in the road was a huge black cat.
“It was longer than my car,” the 45-year-old from the village of Cransford, says today. “It scared the life out of me.”
The animal – roughly the size and colour of a panther – looked at her for what she says felt like a lifetime. Then it turned and bounded off into a farmers field.
If this sounds unbelievable, Aimee – an accountant by profession – is not the only person who claims to have encountered a big cat in this area of Suffolk in recent years.
So common have sightings become that locals have affectionately nicknamed the mysterious creature the Beast of Bruisyard after a nearby village. In April, it was even spotted close to Ed Sheeran’s nearby home. “I will never forget its eyes or the noise it made looking at us,” said one person on social media .
Aimee herself has no doubts she saw a big cat that night in May.
When she got home that evening, she immediately posted about her encounter on the Framlingham Community Facebook Page – which prompted many other locals to share their stories too.
Eliot Evans was one of them.
He says he saw the giant cat nine years ago, when he was a 16-year-old student out jogging near his home in Wickham Market. It made as if to chase him, he says, before leaping over a ditch and running off into nearby fields.
Now a 25-year-old chef, he said: “It was huge, about five feet long.”
Yet despite all this – and despite Suffolk police acknowledging multiple reports of big cats over the last decade – no-one has ever been able to get a picture of the animal, leading many to believe it doesn’t exist.
Experts, however, are not so certain.
They point to statistics – released by the Born Free Foundation – which show a 57 per cent increase in wild cats being owned in the UK in recent years. It is quite possible, believers say, that such pets may have been released into the wild and thrived there.
Lucy Burnell, a 48-year-old veterinary surgeon from Debenham Vets, said: “It’s entirely plausible that it exists, I wouldn’t be so quick to disbelieve.”
The University of Cambridge graduate – who specialises in feline medication and care – added: “I think the idea of it is really exciting. It feels like it would be a good luck charm.”
It all begs the question, where are they coming from and where do they go?
Heather Collinson, 54, the head veterinary surgeon with Debenham Vets, said: “It’s more likely that a number of people in the area own a certain breed of cat, a mix of both large cat and domesticated cat. The cats then escape the garden for a run – and there you have your beast.”
Its not just Suffolk that is plagued with sightings either.
There are about 500-600 sightings of big cats across the UK every single year according to the British Big Cat Society. In Norfolk – right next door to both Suffolk and Lincolnshire – there are an average of ten sightings per year with some dating back to at least 1965. Lincolnshire itself has the Lindsey Leopard which is said to stalk the area.
Yet is it sounds rather worrying, Aimee herself doesn’t think so.
Back with her and looking out over teh fields where she saw the big cat, she says the encounter was a positive thing.
“I feel like I’ve been visited by a late relative,” she said. “Someone who just wanted to show me that they were here, even if it was a weird way to show me.”
