'Beast of Cricklewood' captured by RSPCA

The Surrey puma and the mythical Beast of Bodmin may be the figment of some fertile imaginations, but there was no mistaking a worryingly tangible big cat lurking in suburbia yesterday.

The Surrey puma and the mythical Beast of Bodmin may be the figment of some fertile imaginations, but there was no mistaking a worryingly tangible big cat lurking in suburbia yesterday.

RSPCA investigators called out to catch a "black cat" on a wall in north London were so accustomed to big cat sightings that they had prepared themselves for a ginger tom.

Instead, they encountered what must inevitably earn the soubriquet of The Beast of Cricklewood: a 18-month-old lynx, more usually identified with rocky and forested regions of Asia.

A resident of Cricklewood raised the alarm when she noticed the European lynx perched on her garden wall and called the police, fearing that a leopard was on the loose.

Ray Charter, the head keeper of big cats at London Zoo, conceded last night that he was astonished. "We get numerous calls reporting big cat sightings and so far all of them have proved incorrect," he said.

"It usually turns out to be a large domestic cat; so you can imagine how I felt when I bent down expecting to see a large ginger tom, only to be met by a much more exotic face."

Mr Charter and other animal handlers from London Zoo advised local residents to take themselves ­ and their pets ­ into the safety of their homes.

For a time, the lynx ­ classified as a dangerous wild animal whose diet includes small deer ­ remained on the loose as zoo staff wielding hand-nets failed to trap it.

The animal was finally cornered under a flight of steps and sedated with a blowpipe. Vets identified it as an 18-month old female European lynx. The cat is being treated for malnutrition and an injured left hind leg in London Zoo's hospital but is expected to make a full recovery.

Speculation continued among the concerned residents of the north London suburb yesterday as to where the cat may have come from. But a spokesman from London Zoo dismissed the theory that it could have been surviving in the wild.