Throughout human history, legends about werewolves can be found in folklore and mythology of different peoples. Basically we are talking about wolf people, but there is also a large layer of legends about cat people. Mostly they come from regions where large felines are found: lions, tigers, leopards or jaguars.
But sometimes such stories come from the places where people only saw big cats in zoos. For example, from Poland, where the cat-man is called kotolak. Kotolaks are also known in the Balkans.
These stories include stories of mystical British big cats. For many years, stories have come from British counties of the sighting of very large cats, black or otherwise, killing chickens, sheep or dogs. Sometimes people even manage to photograph these cats, but all the pictures are usually unclear and it is difficult to understand the size of the animal from them.
Presumably we are talking about lions, leopards or tigers who escaped from zoos or private menageries. But this version does not fit several stories where the creatures seen looked like a half-human, half-animal.
One of these stories came from Staffordshire. A villager named Brian Kinnersley said that he walked one warm summer night through the village of Abbots Bromley, which existed in the 10th century AD, and practically collided with a "huge black cat".
From fear, the man froze in place, but then he became even more horrified, as a huge cat suddenly stood on its hind legs and reached a height of about 1.6 meters. After that, the beast growled and swung its front paws towards the man. At the same time, when the beast stood on its hind legs, its body somehow changed, becoming much more human than animal.
After standing in this form for several seconds, the beast fell on four limbs, again becoming like a large panther and disappeared from sight.
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A similar story comes from another old British village, Blakeny, in Norfolk. This happened in 1967. An eyewitness was driving in a car on a cold winter night and caught a glimpse of a creature on the side of the road that was very similar to the one Brian Kinnearley had seen.
"He stood like a man, but he stooped strongly and had a cat's head, even his ears were the same," the woman said.
Two more cases of observation in the UK of cat people date back to 1981 and 1988. Both come from an area called Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. Cannock Chase is a popular destination for cryptozoologists. Yeti, huge snakes, wolf-men, ghosts, UFOs and other anomalies are regularly observed here. Maybe there is a portal to other worlds somewhere here.
In 1981, a strange creature was seen in a cemetery. It stood on two legs, resting on a tombstone and was completely black. When an eyewitness scared him, it instantly stood up on four limbs and disappeared into the thickets.
The 1988 case involved a driver who was driving through Cannock Chase late at night and pulled up at the same cemetery when he saw a huge black cat on the road. The cat looked piercingly at the surprised person, and then … got up on its hind legs. The whole scene lasted about 20 seconds, after which the creature with strange jumps left in the direction of the cemetery.