EXMOOR WILDCATS
With reference to Mr Prior’s letter (August) about a wildcat encounter on Exmoor, can I draw your attention to a little book called Lost Beasts of Britain by Anthony Dent (Harrap, 1974)? The author discussed various creatures then lost to Britain, principally the beaver, boar, ‘catamount’ or wildcat and wolf.
In his chapter on the wildcat he refers to the late Hope Bourne’s (1920-2010) Living on Exmoor, in which she quotes farmer Fred Milton, a former President of the Exmoor Pony Society, as seeing a large wildcat there when he was a boy before 1914. Dent says that these cats were well enough known about Withypool for local children to be told that if such an animal approached the farmyard “to gather up pussy, drive in the chickens and go inside the house”. It seems these creatures were still about in Mr Prior’s youth
Have any of your readers seen any such British wildcats in England in more recent times? George R Featherston, Redcar, North Yorkshire