Meet the Britons who keep big cats and crocs as pets
Growing numbers of wild animals roam our homes and gardens. goes on safari in Essex
In the back garden of a quiet suburban street dotted with privet hedges and buggylined Skoda Roomsters, Iain Newby is being licked by his cat. Squeaky doesn’t like strangers, but he likes Iain, who tosses him a bright yellow ball to chase. The 18-month-old cat, who, until now, had been nuzzling his head against his owner’s side, bounds over two mauled bones in chase.
“That was dinner,” explains Newby, flinging the remnants of a chicken carcass to the side of Squeaky’s cage.
Squeaky enjoys a high-protein diet – not of Whiskas, but pigeon, pheasant, rabbit and, if he’s lucky, defrosted beef steak from Iceland. As a serval – a wild cat that looks like a cross between a leopard and a cheetah – his appetite is considerably larger than domestic breeds.
His species, the fifth largest cat in Africa, can grow to 20kg and is typically found ranging across highgrass savannahs, rather than residential pockets of seaside Essex. Although Squeaky comes from eight generations bred in captivity, his claws are pin-sharp and his teeth like barbed wire. At full size, he will be able to bound 8ft in the air.
Squeaky lives in a 130 sq ft enclosure built by Newby with a water feature, Astroturf, plants, high wooden platforms and cuddly toys to play with.
As a treat, Squeaky is brought into the family’s five-bedroom house on a lead to be petted by Newby’s six children – he has five sons and one daughter, aged between five and 12. “The last time I brought him in on a lead he took up the Man and beast: Iain Newby with Squeaky at home in Essex, right; below, Newby with Rolex the alligator and two of his sons, below whole of the two-seater sofa,” says Newby. “Lisa [Iain’s wife] had some gerbils on the table,” says Newby. “He jumped straight up on to the dining table and was really interested in them. I had to drag him off.”
Newby, 49, a former zookeeper, has owned an array of undomesticated pets including an 8ft alligator called Rolex and a emu named Beaky.
“I don’t put my family in any danger and I never would,” he says. “They have no fear of any of the animals, just a brilliant respect for them.”
Newby is part of a rapidly growing collective of dangerous wild animal owners stretched across the length and breadth of the UK. A recent investigation by the Press Association unearthed thousands of exotic mammals and reptiles tucked behind Britain’s fences and herbaceous borders.
There are cheetahs in Hertfordshire, leopards in Lincolnshire, and pumas in Swansea. Cornwall County Council has issued dangerous wild animal (DWA) licenses for lynxes, lemurs and ocelots, and Croydon is reportedly heaving with snakes.
The panic caused when an animal of this nature wriggles loose was shown earlier this month when Flaviu the lynx escaped from Devon’s Dartmoor Zoo, mobilising a police helicopter, drone, thermal imaging cameras and army of handlers. She hasn’t yet been found. A “dream” wedding due to take place this weekend in the grounds of Dartmoor Zoo required extra security to be drafted in.
Last month, a 8ft python was found washed up on a Kent beach, while in May a 18-footer was pulled from the Grand Union Canal in Leicester by a kayaker. Both were dead, but experts believe them to be escaped pets.
Many, like Newby, say the official figure of dangerous animals being kept as pets barely touches the sides – many owners go without a licence, something required by law but enforced with little vigour. In 2001, the government published a review of the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animal Act that concluded as many as 90 per cent of the dangerous animals owned in this country may not be registered. The reasons are invariably down to owners being reluctant to pay a fee, open their homes to inspection or simply because they can’t be bothered to apply.
Licensing is up to local authorities to enforce and interpret. As such, Ros Clubb, a senior wildlife scientific officer for the RSPCA, says it is a postcode lottery. “If the council has limited resources, licences fall to the bottom of the pile. Sometimes it is those doing bar and restaurant licences who do the inspections.”
With more people seeking the cachet of an exotic pet, ownership of carnivorous and dangerous rare breeds is increasing. Many, like Newby, are responsible licence holders. Others are less so. In 2015, the RSPCA investigated 2,772 calls received about reptiles – a 50 per cent increase from seven years ago. Welfare officers have discovered adult alligators in indoor paddling pools and, in another case, were called to tend to an escaped lynx the size of an Alsatian that was roaming the streets of Cricklewood in London. Newby, who also rehomes rescued animals, was called to a house where a crocodile was being reared in a bathtub by a 13-year-old.
“People sell alligators from the boots of their cars in pub car parks,” he