Two more readers of The Westmorland Gazette have had chance encounters with big black cats following last week's reported sighting near Kirkby Stephen, writes Jennie Dennett.

A Cheshire tourist has reported coming face to face with a panther in a nocturnal encounter through the window of his Orton holiday home.

Mike Lyons, of Middlewich, happened to pull back the curtains at 3am to look at the stars only to find himself catching sight of an unexpected passer-by about 25ft from his window.

"I saw this huge black cat almost directly below me," said the secondary school science teacher.

"It was looking at me for between five and 25 seconds and sauntered off.

It was totally unbothered by the fact I was looking at it."

Mr Lyons said he was quite sure of what he saw because the cat was brightly lit by a nearby streetlight outside his Silver Yard house.

He also stressed that he recognised the animal from seeing large cats at zoos and in nature documentaries in the course of his teaching.

"At the time I thought `that is a panther'.

It had a squarish mouth, rounded ears and a sloping tail."

He described the feline as roughly the size of a Labrador with a glossy, "absolutely jet black" coat.

Mr Lyons said he now felt able to report what he saw after reading an account in last week's Westmorland Gazette of a big black cat sighting at Smardale Mill Road, near Kirkby Stephen, on October 28.

"I have been up to Cumbria quite a lot and heard one or two [black cat] rumours but being new to the village I wasn't going to go in to the pub and say `I've seen a panther'!"

Meanwhile, David Lawson, 58, who lives near Hawkshead, said that he saw a large black cat on the road from the Drunken Duck to Outgate while out walking his dog at around 8am on Monday.

"I had read about all these reported sightings in the Gazette and had taken them all with a pinch of salt but this was definitely not a dog or a domestic cat," said Mr Lawson.

"I was looking behind me to see where my dog was and turned back round and saw this thing come over a wall about 30 yards in front of me.

"It was high tailing it down the road.

It was as black as your hat.

It was not a dog because you could tell by the way it was running.

I'm totally bemused by what I saw.

I have never seen anything like it before."

There have been repeated sightings of large, non-native cats throughout South Lakeland, Eden and Furness which has led naturalist Terry Hooper, who has kept the exotic animal register since the 1970s, to conclude that there are black cats - probably panthers - roaming the Lake District.

"I think you have got two females permanently and maybe one or two males that come in and out of the county," he said.

Sighting "hot-spots" are likely to be encounters with the females while occasional glimpses are probably males who patrol a larger territory, according to Mr Hooper.