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Imagine coming across a leopard in your back garden in downtown Cape Town or Jozi. Would you storm towards the cat in an territorial manner demanding that it depart your erf immediately, approach the animal cooing ‘pretty cat, nice cat’ while extending your hand invitingly, or soberly retire indoors and phone an animal rescue organization?

Your average South African suburbanite, educated in the carnivorous and large toothed nature of big cats by countless ‘Predators of Africa’, ‘Feline Killers’ and ‘Big Cats, Big Teeth’ Sunday evening wildlife programmes would probably hightail it to their trellidoored interiors and speed dial emergency services. Large, possibly hungry, carnivorous cat versus tasty city slicker – the likely outcomes are understood, this would be no time for Crocodile-Hunter-style heroics.

Perhaps he wasn’t a BBC wild life devotee or maybe the likelihood of real backyard danger seemed so remote, but in the early hours of last Tuesday, a London man thought it sensible to investigate further after spotting a cat-like creature the size of a Labrador prowling in his garden.

In a land of refined sensibilities, where the discovery of peanut traces in a cereal causes public outrage and parliamentarians can be ruined just by the insinuation of corruption, you’d think the natives would be a bit more cautious about confronting mysterious feral cats in the middle of the night. The man was attacked and treated by an ambulance crew for severe scratches. The animal, which he described as a giant puma-like cat, vanished into the undergrowth, eluding a police search.

Now, if I had heard this story a few years ago, I would have thought the man spinning a far-fetched yarn to cover up some kinky domestic shenanigans. Everyone knows large cats are no longer indigenous to Britain where the top local carnivore (besides man) is the fox – not quite big five material.

As it happens though, when I heard about the puma in London, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I had seen one. Eight years ago on a wintry afternoon, I had been gazing out of the second storey window of a friend’s house in London and seen a panther-like animal walking across the pebbled driveway. It was the size of a ridgeback, but heavier, and had the distinct shoulder mincing walk of a big cat.

For a few moments I was transfixed by the extraordinary vision and then darted downstairs, but by the time I reached the window, the animal had disappeared into the wooded area near the house. I hadn’t been drinking. No one believed me, but I never doubted I had seen a large cat and whenever I went walking alone after that I wished the English were not so lily-livered as to outlaw the civilian use of mace.

My delusions about how I might have confronted a puma with a can of pepper spray aside, the news of the London skirmish piqued my curiosity. It seems that there have been numerous sightings of giant cats in the UK over the years and the recent sighting in London was not an isolated incident. Special interest societies and websites chronicle the sightings of the animals and provide theories on how these cats could have ended up wandering the countryside and venturing into the cities.

It’s always convenient and satisfying to lay blame at the foot of an imperial power and it seems the Romans did their fair share for introducing exotic animals into the wintry climes of their northern territories. Fond of circuses, they would import creatures from across the empire for their amusement. Electric fencing and tranquilliser darts not being quite what they should have been in Roman times, the animals often escaped to roam the wuthering heights of their far-flung island home. These foreign predators would dine on the livestock of persecuted Celtic subsistence farmers and probably continued to do so throughout the repressive regimes of the Saxon’s, Normans and indeed still do under New Labour.

Although it’s gratifying to insinuate that ancient oppressors are responsible for livestock losses in the Scottish highlands, the story does not end with the Romans. These garlic loving overlords can however be blamed for cultivating a fascination with the exotic which continued down throughout history, realised in the circuses that roamed the countryside and the menageries of grand homes that became popular in Elizabethan times.

It was contemporary rulers, coupled with a bit of sex, drugs and rock and roll that more recently compounded the problem by introducing the Dangerous Wild Animals Act in 1976 in an attempt to control the number of diamond collared cougars accessorising the rich and famous. Owners of exotic creatures were required to apply for licenses for the animals and provide adequate security on their premises to protect the public. These laws must have smacked of hard administrative work to the drug addled brains of the seventies and many of the animals were simply released into the wild, by the owners or professionals charged with disposing of them to wildlife sanctuaries and zoos.

And so, pumas and panthers, leopards and wolverines roam the British landscape as the pyjama-clad homeowners of middle England stalk foreign beasts by the light of an English moon. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, then now is the time for the suburbs to reinstall moats, razor wire and electric fencing, if not to protect the fearless who should know better, then at least to save the big cats of London to terrorise for a few centuries more.