THE mystery of the big cat glimpsed by two workers in the car park of a care home, has deepened.

One of the workers who saw the huge black cat says the sighting may help to resolve other unexplained incidents at the home off Bexleyheath Broadway.

Night manager Nicole Webb, 40, was one of the two people who saw the cat briefly as it crept on its belly alongside a car in the car park.

She said: "We have had quite a lot of trouble here with what we thought were intruders.

"I oversee 25 homes and it is quite common when they are first built to have people wandering in and out.

"But we were always amazed how they managed to disappear so quickly when we went outside after them, especially as they had to get over a 6ft fence.

"A big cat would explain how the intruder always managed to disappear without a trace."

She said this was why, when she and fellow worker James Horby first saw the cat, they thought it was a man crawling on his hands and knees. "It was frightening when we realised it wasn't human. It had a tail as long as my arm," she said.

Mrs Webb described how, on one occasion, they thought the intruder had scaled a tree at the back of the home. "I went out and shone a torch into the tree but I couldn't see anything.

"It would have given me the shock of my life if I had found a black panther staring back at me."

Mrs Webb said she and Mr Hornby had got a ribbing from colleagues after they claimed to have seen the black cat. "But it all went very quiet when we found the giant paw print in the sand the following morning," she said.

Mrs Webb is now convinced a big cat is on the prowl in Bexley.

She has been discussing with the British Big Cat Society the possibility of setting up movement activated cameras to try and photograph the creature if, as she believes, it is a regular visitor.