Father and son flee Welsh beach barbecue after 'spotting puma' in second recent reported sighting

A father and his nine-year-old son fled a beach in Wales after they spotted what they believe was a puma, it has been reported.

Jimmy Butler said he and his son saw the big cat while setting up a barbecue on the beach at Pwllheli on the Lyn Peninsula, in north-west Wales.

He said they saw the animal near Gimblet Rock at about 7pm on 12 May. It is the second such reported puma sighting at Pwllheli within two months.

Butler told big cat sightings website Puma Watch he tried to scare the animal away by making loud noises, and then fled the beach with his son, leaving the barbecue behind.

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He said: "My lad grabbed me and said, ‘What is that? Is it a dog?’

“I panicked and made a bit of noise to which the cat quickly disappeared.

“We got back to the car and there was a local about to go fishing and I told him what happened and he said he’d heard of four or five sightings of the same description in the last few weeks."

Butler described it as "a very surreal experience", adding: "I didn’t think they were even in this country.”

In March, three friends who were night fishing in Pwllheli said they saw a puma while parking their car at Gimblet Rock.

One of them, Paul Wilson, told Puma Watch: “It was sat amongst the dune grass which was on a slope going upwards away from us. I walked a few metres towards it whilst my friend turned his headlights on to illuminate it more.

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“We all then realised that it was not a dog but a very large cat that then stood up and turned away and loped away from us, turning its head to look back once at us. We didn’t see it again. The cat was as big as a Golden Retriever.”

According to reports, there are about 50 big cat sightings in the UK each year.

Yahoo News UK has approached the Welsh government agency Natural Resources Wales for comment.