June 2009
This was taken on Sunday 28th June 2009, in woods in the south of Kintyre in Scotland. I managed to get a short piece of video as I followed it up the path. The video is very shaky, as It was a fair distance away, I was trying to follow it and I was being eaten alive by midges.
Steve Piper at the Scottish Wildcat Association managed to stabalise this footage somewhat.
Although not a full blood Scottish wildcat, Steve agreed with my initial thoughts saying "...I think I can positively identify it as a reasonable hybrid; the markings are very good looking on the body, the tail is too slender and tapered with the beginnings of a dorsal strips at the top though, that's the main giveaway, overall the cat looks a little more slender than a pure wildcat but it has to be at least a 50/50 or better"
Shaun Stevens
The following comments were made by the Scottish Wildcat Association on their youtube site
"Shaun Stevens at Big Cats in Britain kindly sent us this video he managed to grab on an extreme zoom of a hybrid wildcat in Scotland. The zoom makes it a little shaky but you can make out enough to see this cat bears many classic wildcat markings, sadly diluted by domestic ancestors in the family tree; pay attention to the tail which is quite slim and tapers to a point, notice also the tail bands are almost forming a dorsal stripe. Pure wildcats have very distinct bands, a tail about 2-3 times as thick and it always ends in a blunt tip like a baseball bat. Thanks Shaun; www.bigcatsinbritain.org"
