A SUSPECTED 'big cat' was spotted going into bushes near a busy main road in Worcestershire and the surprised woman who saw was 'just six metres away'. 

The sighting took place near Mamble on the A456 between Tenbury Wells and Kidderminster at around on Thursday at around 4.30pm.

A woman posted details of this latest sighting in the Evesham and Villages Big Cat Group and it comes in the wake of a number of other sightings in Worcestershire and DNA evidence of the large predators in other parts of Britain.

She said: "Sighting of a big black cat yesterday around 4.30pm near Mamble on the A456 going into bushes from the road."

Speaking to the Worcester News after her encounter, she said: "I was about six meters away when I spotted it.

"Obviously I was very surprised when I realised it was a big cat after initially thinking the large animal was a fox or badger but as I got closer I saw the long black tail and I was convinced it was a big cat after also hearing stories of sightings all over Hereford and Worcester."

We have already reported on several sightings of black cats in Worcestershire including in Norton and Defford and even a 'growling creature' in Gorse Hill and Elbury Mount Local Nature Reserve in Worcester which scared a dog walker and two large, powerful dogs.

Meanwhile, a roadworker has filmed what he described as a “six-foot long”, large black panther-like cat in Cambridgeshire – but, as ever with big cat sightings in the UK, doubts remain.

Jason Dobney had pulled into a lay-by last Sunday, November 10 just outside of Baston, north of Peterborough, with a work colleague when they spotted the animal walking along the edge of a field.

“It was about the size of a rottweiler,” Dobney told BBC Countryfile Magazine. “It had a very muscley front, like an American bulldog, it definitely wasn’t a house cat. It was fixated on walking along, I’d say it was prowling.”

British big cat expert – and host of the Big Cat Conversations podcast – Rick Minter said the cat was most likely to have been a leopard, which can vary in size, with females smaller than males.

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Big cat investigator Sharon Larkin-Snowden, discovered Panthera DNA on a sheep's carcass in Cumbria in May of this year.

With DNA evidence of a big cat in Cumbria, found on a kill, and closer to home in neighbouring Gloucestershire, people living in Worcestershire continue to report more sightings.

Strands of hair belonging to a leopard species Panthera Pardus have already been found on a barbed wire fence at a farm in neighbouring Gloucestershire following an attack on a sheep in 2022.