STUNNED residents of an Ardrossan housing estate were this week warned to be on their guard. after an animal resembling a PUMA was spotted near their homes.

Police officers got a glimpse of the dark-coloured beast, which was around three feet tall with piercing yellow eyes, having been alerted to strange wailing I noises in the Aitken Place area, just off Dairy Road, i around 3.20am on Monday morning.

 The constables called to the scene spotted the creature prowling in the undergrowth beyond the street – around  where the train line passes it - before it made off into the night.       •

Now the force have now told local householders to stay away from a mysterious big cat, and to be on their lookout.

A police spokesman said: "Members of the public are asked to be vigilant and any sightings of the animal should be reported. The animal should not be approached."

One theory was that the creature may actually have been a large black dog that belongs to a couple in Aitken Place.

But Steve Detotney (50), the Great Dane's owner, said: "He wasn't out at that time of night; if he was he opened the door himself." Another resident, Joan Kane, explained how their were quite regularly unusual noises coming from the shrubbery near the estate, adding that a family of foxes frequent the waste land between Aitken Place and the former Arbride factory.

Descriptions of the animal point to it being puma-like, though, and wouldn't be the first time one had been seen in the county in recent times. Earlier this year Tory MSP Phil Gallic wrote to Justice Minister Jim Wallace on behalf of a constituent concerned about big cat sightings.

Five creatures were spotted over a few weeks in Galston, Fenwick and Stewarton in East Ayrshire and Craigie in South Ayrshire. And elsewhere in Scotland there have been numerous "big cat" sightings over the past 10 years.