The Shooters Hill episode is summarised in a Kent Big Cat Research article that surveys the Surrey puma flap of the 1960s and its London tail. It says David Back spotted an animal lying by the roadside at Shooters Hill at 1 am on 18 July 1963.
The response was large. According to the article, 126 policemen with more than twenty dogs, alongside ambulance staff and RSPCA officials, combed over 800 acres. They believed the animal was a cheetah, although, the author points out, none of the contemporary reports actually described one. The search found nothing.
The author uses this as an example of the repeated pattern in which big hunts turn up no animal. The same article mentions a rumour that a large cat, possibly a puma, was shot and killed near Greenwich Observatory in 1987, with no source or confirmation. Only the 1963 hunt is treated here as the documented event.
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