I saw one of those black cats as well. They are black leopards. I was cycling down a hill at the back of our village in Devon and something big and black with a long curving tail ran across the road ahead of me. When it saw me, it turned tail and ran back the way it came which was from a field. I climbed up onto the gate to try and see it in the field but it disappeared. That was in the mid 80s. Years later, my Dad came face to face with one of them and was only about 12 feet from it.