Interesting thread but I should flag up - I'm in Staffordshire, so no use to you lot for the Blue Ridge specifically. What I will say is that big black cat sightings follow remarkably similar patterns whether you're in Virginia or the English Midlands. Low light conditions, near woodland edges, brief sighting then nothing. People always second-guess themselves afterwards which is what the debunkers rely on.
The UK has decades of documented "phantom cat" reports and the official line is still basically "you saw a dog mate." So I'd take whatever the US wildlife authorities tell you with a very large pinch of salt.
What I genuinely find more interesting is whether any of the witnesses experienced anything unusual before or after the sighting - time distortion, missing time, that sort of thing. There's a small but consistent overlap between big cat encounters and what I'd loosely call liminal strangeness. Probably nothing but its worth asking.
Anyone got actual photos or just eyewitness accounts so far?