Details of Sixteen Claws

Field studied to 1995 and written up by Barb Holdsworth copyright 2004

This Animal is probably a cat of some description as it buries its faeces and urine.

BUT IT DOES HAVE SIXTEEN CLAWS ON EACH OF ITS FOUR FEET.

It walks in a straight line i.e. 000000000. Therefore I believe the shoulders and hindquarters have to be different to other quadrupeds.

Adult tracks measure six and a quarter inches across to eight and a quarter inches across. The front to back measurement varies with how the animal is to walk and how he is using the different pads of the feet.

The animal sometimes walks on the front claws only - sometimes on two sometimes on four and these claws are strong and three inches long and one cast shows that where the BASE of the nail is joining the pad, then measurement of the connecting part of the nail is five eighths of an inch across.

When the animal is walking in sand, have often seen nine scratches in each footprint from its nails. This number of scratches marks has also been seen on trunks of trees and on branches where animal suns itself.

When first seen the juvenile footprint is only two inches across and consists only of the two pads that hold six claws each. Sometimes, the little one is jumping every which way around its' mother for five or six feet, then track disappears completely, whether into a pouch or mother's mouth for carrying, I don't know.

As baby gets more active, have sent racks of three adults and two juveniles crossing the road. Have seen this several times and for several years but never are the young the same size. By the feet one is always bigger than the other.

All four of the animal's feet look exactly the same; there is no way to tell left from right or fore food from hind foot.

These animals also like to go on the beach to dig out the crab holes and into the mangroves to look for fallen fruit bats.

Twice have come across the long scratch mark made by these animals and each time it has been four inches wide and made by four very strong claws and a full three feet long!

Once saw where five adults started out walking down the hill on the road and around a big road curve until they arrived near the mangroved high tide area and here they jumped down among the trees and all the way of 240 yards they were equidistant across the road as though they could have been hunting.

When animal is travelling fast the track is rounder than the normal walking track and so much dirt is thrown into the three eighths - one half-inch deep hole (in a very hard dirt road) of the footprint that it is impossible to get a cast of it.

In the above 48 yard dash at speed the animal only made eighteen single footprints. It is as though the animal can get up and run on its' two back feet.

Two friends were walking from Chili Beach to Portland Roads (about six miles) came on the tracks of the same animal and said that it appeared to get up on only two feet for part of the way.

Above my block and to the side of it I have seen places where the animal has lept up into the trees and have eight and sometimes nine scratches for each foot. Have also seen nice sloping branches where the rough bark has been smoothed with use and occasionally scratch mark there.

Lying in bed at 2.00a.m. I heard a big cat sniffing at the back corner of my house, only six feet away from my head. As it moved away I quickly went and woke young Steve and gave him my torch thinking young eyes are quicker than old ones. Steve saw a cat as big as Blackie, my medium-size dog moving away nonchalantly up the toilet track. It was black in colour, but it was only a moving black shadow to me.

Rob was staying at Markert's place here at Portland Roads and he put a spot light on a big black bat as it moved along the road and went down onto the beach and disappeared.

The next year, Rob was again staying up here but this time at the 'Round House'. He had injured back and he often had to get up at night and he would take a walk to the beach and he quite often would saw that while walking he could hear an animal padding along behind and to the side of him as he walked the road. Every time he stopped to listen, it stopped. Of course, the attraction may have been Rob's two toy dogs who were always with him.

One morning at 4.00a.m., I had to go to the toilet 60 years away and while sitting with the torch off there was a sudden loud noise in the dried leaves as a big animal took off running. The front of the toilet has a curtain of Sarlon Shade Cloth and I think the animal was halfway across before he picked up my scent.

My small in stature cat Cheekie has had two encounters with the big cats and was left with marks to prove it. The first time, she has three claw marks on her side and an injured elbow. The marks started near the back bone and were three inches long and each wound one inch away from the next down her side, the fourth claw caught at here elbow which was an inch away from the first scratch. Eventually, her wounds healed and almost straight away she comes in one morning with both her sides scored from shoulder to hind quarters with the big cat's four inch wide and all four claws being used.

One night I heard a cat 'talking' to its' kitten just as though it was reassuring the young one just before picking the kitten up, This was on the front lawn. The only thing was, the talking was 40 - 50 times louder than a normal house cat but oh so like a domestic cat.

Another night, there was rain falling on the unceiled roof and music being played up at the other house on the block and yet above it all I heard a hissing coming from the direction of the mango tree ten yards from this house. The hissing was repeated several times just as cats hiss when another animal goes near when one is eating food. Again, the loudness was a good 40 - 50 times louder than a normal house cat. The next morning, the big sharks jaws I had put in the crotch of a mango tree to get wet so that they could be cleaned properly were no more, there was no evidence of the actually jaws left at all, except in different places in the yard, four places, there were four piles of shark's teeth.

A friend who lived on Chili Beach twice told me that a big cat had visited here and had been only about ten yards from here front door when it started howling. She said it was scary while all that noise was going on. The cat or another one made another visit several months later and the same performance went on again. Perhaps it was calling for a mate.

Some Chili Beach men went pig hunting ten miles away and not long after getting to their destination. They had their really good hunting dogs and rifles with them when suddenly and close by they heard a big cat howl and the dogs hurriedly took shelter behind their master with bristles up and whingeing with fright

One night Blackie started barking and raced to get outside and the cat on the other side of the iron wall made a hurried retreat for the cover of the 6 - 7 feet high guinea grass which was in head at the time. The animal jumped and landed three times, each leap was a ten-foot leap and where he landed each time he flattened the guinea, but where he leapt through guinea seed head he never broke one. One foot cast was the result.

There was a young couple staying up in the other house on this block and one day they were standing out in the back yard talking to a fisherman friend and they were idly looking ahead to where they could see an ant nest built in the crotch of a tree about 40 yards away. Suddenly the ant nest "came alive" and a big black cat jumped down and jumped up into another tree. This was about 7:00 am.

She came running down to me and told me she had seen the CAT and it has a long tail. She said the tail was so long that if the tail was held down half of it would be dragging on the ground. She said it was all black in colour and when sitting, the cat would be a METRE tall and was ALL CAT IN EVERY RESPECT.

Three months after the above sighting my next-door neighbour stopped me on the road to tell me that one day she was watering the garden at dusk and a big CAT cam out of some bushes and stood watching her, but she did not see this cat's tail. The animal was the size of a big German shepherd or Alsatian and as they own Alsatians she should be a good judge of the height. It was all black but had a brown slash from forehead to snout, notice that I say snout!

This animal had a cat's body BUT as she put it, "it had a head of a dingo". Later and from others, I have heard this animal described as the CAT WITH A DOG's HEAD and CAT WITH A WHIPPET's HEAD. Also the height of this CAT was given as it was seen sitting beside a five wire fence as "head coming to the height of the fourth wire from the ground."

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In the really early days of looking for tracks I was told of a calf being found and it had a nasty wound on its rump, which was very wide and the remark was made that the flesh looked as though it had been MINCED. This has always remained in my memory because of the strangeness of the remark BUT with hindsight I can see the sense in it now. If sixteen claws hit the calf, that number of claws would MINCE THE FLESH.

Details of Sixteen Claws Foot Structure

This is a totally different type of CAT because not only does the CAT have more than the regulation of the World Scientists

ONLY FOUR OR FIVE CLAWS PER FOOT BUT ALSO

Drawing by Barb Holdsworth 30/09/1995

THE ONLY CLAWS GOING TO THE FRONT ARE THE BIG MAIN FRONT CLAWS FOUR IN NUMBER

THE OTHER TWELVE ALL POINT TO THE BACK OF THE PAW.

Barb Holdsworth

Portland Roads

30/09/1995

Copyright 2004

The above are casts of 16 claws as taken by Barbara.

I have since been advised by Mr. Mike WILLIAMS of Strange Nation that "re the 16 toes, it was identified by Biologist Roger Frankenburg as 100% Cane toad marks". I must say that on looking at the casts of 16 claws, which I now hold in my posession, I have never seen anything quit like them.

Included on the site on 23/05/04.