A COUPLE have told how they spotted a panther-like big cat apparently looking for prey in a Derbyshire field.

Pat Williamson, of Milton, near Repton, was doing the washing-up in her kitchen on Thursday when she spotted the animal in a field behind her back garden.

She said it was bigger than a Labrador dog with the sleekness of a cat.

Mrs Williamson, 66, of Main Street, said it could have been looking for foxes, pheasants, partridges and hares that live in the field.

She said: "It was 8pm. I looked up and saw it in the rapeseed field. The animal was big and side-on so I could see it was long.

"It had a long black curly tail. I told my husband to get up quick and he came out to have a look.

"He went to get the binoculars from upstairs but by the time he had come downstairs it had slunk off into the bushes."

Mrs Williamson said she had been worried about leaving her house after the sighting.

She said: "I would normally go out at night to sort out the bins and that kind of thing. But I didn't that night. I haven't seen it since."

Her husband Ken, 77, agreed that the animal was panther-like.

He said: "I'd have got the camera but it wasn't to hand. It was certainly a cat-like creature that was bigger than a dog.

"When I looked it was dead still, looking around."

Big Cats In Britain, a group founded to look into their existence, said there had been a number of sightings in south Derbyshire but not for more than two years.

Derbyshire area representative Sue Pocock visited the couple on Friday and looked in the field but could not find any trace of the animal.

She said: "We have had sightings in Bretby, Midway, Swadlincote, and a couple in Burton."

Mrs Pocock, 43, of Swadlincote, said she saw a panther-like animal in Ashbourne in 2007.

She said: "I believe there's something out there but we are not yet in a position to say for certain."

The Williamsons' big cat was the first confirmed sighting in Derbyshire this year, although a number of paw prints have been found.

A three-inch-wide puma-like paw print was discovered on January 19 by Peter Ward, of Millers Green, Wirksworth.

On January 26, police also received reports of a large black cat on a patio belonging to Heidi and Dave Robinson in Whatstandwell. The couple took pictures of a paw print.

And Hannah Scott of Castle Donington found a paw print she believed belonged to a large cat in Shining Cliffs, Ambergate, on January 25.