PULLING back the curtains one morning, a Fovant resident caught sight of something rather unusual in the field behind her home.

Sylvia Blaydon says she spotted a “huge black shape” last Monday morning at about 7am, which she believes could have been a type of big cat.

“After looking through the binoculars the only thing that is very, very like it is a panther.” she said.

“I am 100 per cent sure it was a big cat. I’ve seen enough wild animals where I lived in Canada.”

On spotting the animal she says she was not scared. “Seeing stuff like that doesn’t faze me.”

She says after spotting the “huge black shape” she took her binoculars and crept down the garden to look over the back fence to get a better look and tried to photograph it on that misty morning.

She says it was about three or four feet long and was in the field in “quite long grass” in the area of Dinton Road.

“It half turned towards me and half sat up and I saw the big round shape of its head. The ears were much like a bear’s ears. While I was watching it slunk away across the grass,” she added.

“It was big, had a very long tail and to start with it was lying on the ground. Its head was turned and it was staring at me with big yellow eyes. It got up and had quite short legs,” she says.

She says she is more used to seeing deer and pheasants in the field but was “not petrified” of the animal when she saw it.

“It was bigger than a deer. I got the binoculars out, it looked at me and looked like a big cat.”

After the sighting she went over to the spot where the animal had been sighted. She said: “Where it was sitting the grass had been flattened and you could see the flattened trail it had made.”

Sylvia has asked if anyone is able to enhance the photograph to help get a closer look at the animal.

She has told her neighbours about the sighting but says she has not seen it since.

The Journal has contacted the British Big Cats Society about the sighting.