London - Authorities had dismissed previous sightings in London as mistaken identity or even hallucination, but this time the large wild cat - at least four times the size of a domestic tabby - was definitely real.
The Eurasian lynx was finally darted and caught in the heart of the concrete jungle on Tuesday after six hours of pursuit by zookeepers, police and animal protection officers.
The cat, a female, was estimated to stand about 60 centimetres at the shoulder.
Armed police, veterinary surgeons with blowpipes, zookeepers, officers from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and curious but fearful members of the general public pursued the lynx from a private garden across a public tennis court to a stairwell in a block of flats where it was darted.
During the pursuit, the animal, described as "like a picture postcard" by one eyewitness, easily cleared a 2m fence in the north London suburb of Cricklewood.
Its capture followed 10 years of sightings of a "puma-like creature" around London, nicknamed derisively as the Beast of Barnet and dismissed by the authorities as the product of febrile imaginations.
"I thought it was a leopard or something. It was the size of an alsatian with mottled beige and grey fur with what looked like little black feathers on the top of its ears and very soft looking baby fur on its belly," said Carol Montague, the cleaner who first spotted the cat.
Police laughed at her when she called them, but Constable Darryl Green's grin quickly disappeared.
"We took a call from a lady who thought there was a leopard in her garden. We looked out the kitchen window and saw quite clearly that it wasn't a cat. It was just sitting there on the fence, quite calmly, looking back at us," he said.
Authorities are now speculating on how the cat came to be in London. The lynx is classified as dangerous and keeping one requires the kind of permit usually issued only to zoos and wildlife parks.
The capture has also revived speculation on the Beast of Bodmin, a fabled cat that is said to roam Bodmin Moor in Cornwall in southwest England, where claw imprints have been found and numerous sightings reported.
The imprints, of which casts have been taken, along with the sightings, have led some experts to believe there are puma-like cats living on the moor and that they are breeding. Others remain sceptical. - Sapa-DPA