A LORRY driver has reported seeing a “large cat” crossing the M56 entry slip road near Ellesmere Port.

The HGV driver saw the creature behind the Chester Costco store at about 2am on Monday, April 5.

The driver, called Dom, reported the encounter to Puma Watch North Wales, a group set up to document encounters that has been getting an increasing number of reports from the Chester, Ellesmere Port and Frodsham areas.

Dom says he was joining the motorway from the roundabout when the “slim, speckled brown” animal darted out from the back of Costco, across the road ahead of him into the “wasteland” within the road junction.

He told Puma Watch: “I was joining the M56 Eastbound from the slip road off the A494 next to the VOSA checkpoint.

“I was driving my artic lorry and as I left the roundabout to join the slip road a large cat crossed the slip road left to right, from the back of Costco towards the wasteland in the centre of the motorway junction.

“The cat looked young, it was speckled brown in colour, about the height of a fox, slim-bodied but with very large legs and paws and a long bushy tail.”

Puma Watch has now set up an interactive map to record sightings.

Founder of the group, Tony Jones said: "Dom’s sighting has been added to our new interactive map

"It comes after a series of sightings in Chester, Ellesmere Port and Frodsham. A few weeks earlier, a big cat was caught on camera in Frodsham, then another sighting occurred on the outskirts of the town.

"The sightings follow others nearby in Ellesmere Port, at Ince Marshes and Whitby Park.

"In Chester, on Friday 16th April, someone spotted what could have been a puma near Blacon, at a location well under a mile from four other recent sightings. Just along the canal to the North, a large, black animal with a very long tail was spotted twice within a week, around the abandoned Old Oaks Golf Course and the Countess of Chester Country Park.

"The sightings followed a 4ft-long cat 'with a great big tail' being spotted twice in one night in fields bordering Blacon, behind Sealand Road Asda."

Footage of a large black creature was caught on CCTV by Chris and Wendy Bebbington of Frodsham

Footage of a large black creature was caught on CCTV by Chris and Wendy Bebbington of Frodsham

Tony added: "Big cats such as pumas are solitary with a hunting range of dozens of miles. They’re mostly spotted in Snowdonia and the Clwydian hills but reports of sightings in urban locations some distance from these areas are becoming more frequent."

He added: "We've created the interactive map to help people find sightings by location. We've simply had so many reports now that a map is the only decent way for people to browse through them.

"In time, we hope to add functionality to filter the sightings on the map by things like date, species, or to only show sightings with photos etc, but for now it simply shows every sighting.