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as huge, jet-black, glossy, with a long tail, definitely a cat. One person
claimed to have seen it with a lamb in its mouth. Another described
how it 'cleared a hedge like a racehorse'. 2 It was blamed for the grisly
carcasses of sheep and calves found in remote corners of the farms.
But it was only when the former policeman reported it to both his
current and former colleagues that the beast began to be taken ser-
iously. The County Times described his sighting as '100% authentic'. 3
Three weeks later, when five people saw it at Rudbaxton, the police
sent out an armed response unit. A spokesman for Dyfed-Powys
police told me that they were advising people to keep their distance if
they saw the Pembrokeshire Panther, and to report it to the council.
'We have to take it seriously, even though strictly speaking it's not a
police matter, unless people are in imminent danger.' He added that,
in response to reports like Michael's, the Welsh Assembly Govern-
ment had set up a Big Cat Sightings Unit. I checked: the unit,
improbable creature though it is, exists.
I became certain that Michael is an honest, reliable, unexcitable
man who has no interest in publicity - in fact he seemed embarrassed
by it. I am certain that, in common with other people who claim to
have spotted the Beast, he faithfully described what he saw. I am
equally certain that the Pembrokeshire Panther does not exist.
There is scarcely a self-respecting borough in Britain which does not
now possess - or is not now possessed by - a Beast. Even the London
suburbs claim to be infested with big cats: there is a Beast of Barnet,
a Beast of Cricklewood, a Crystal Palace Puma and a Sydenham Pan-
ther. There have been occasional reports of mysterious British cats
throughout history. The earliest written record - Cath Palug (Palug's
Cat or the Clawing Cat) - is found in the Black Book of Carmarthen ,
written, as the panther runs, thirty miles from where Michael Disney
saw his creature. The fragment at the top of this chapter is all that
remains of this account: 'His shield was ready/Against Cath Palug/
When the people welcomed him./Who pierced the Cath Palug?/Nine
score before dawn/ Would fall for its food./Nine score chieftains.' 4 But
the same animal also appears in the Welsh Triads , where its reported
attributes present an even stiffer challenge to biology: it was born,
alongside a wolf and an eagle, to a giant sow.
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