Anyone else seen a black cat the size of a German Shepherd near the Blue Ridge Parkway?

Not my usual territory - I'm mostly a spontaneous human combustion man myself - but big black cats are something I've followed a fair bit over the years. We get a lot of reports of them here in Shropshire and the wider UK, places like Bodmin, Dartmoor, you name it. The theory over here is escaped exotic pets from the 70s before the Dangerous Wild Animals Act came in.

My question for you lot is what exactly did you see that made you think it was a cat rather than a large dog? The gait is apparently quite distinctive, that low shouldered stalking walk. Did it move like that? And was the tail long and curved upward or just hanging?

Genuinely curious because the Blue Ridge area seems to come up again and again in these reports and I wonder if theres actually a breeding population out there or just isolated sightings of the same animal. Anyone got photos or know if wildlife cameras have ever picked anything up in that area?

@GrizzledStag mate, you're in the right county for it. Shropshire and the Welsh borders have some of the most consistent big cat reports in Britain going back decades, I've read accounts from farmers there that would make your hair stand up.

The Blue Ridge sightings are interesting though because over there people often assume it's just a known cougar straying out of range, whereas here in the UK we can't even officially admit these things exist which makes the whole thing murkier. Bristol and Somerset have had plenty of sightings too, not far from me, and the witnesses are always the same - farmers, dog walkers, people who know what a normal animal looks like and are absolutely baffled by what they're seeing.

What kind of terrain near the Parkway? Dense tree line or more open ground?