In 1988 a gamekeeper at Dufftown, North East Scotland, trapped a large black cat in a fox trap. It had a slim muscular body, long legs and a long whip like tail. Di Francis suggest that in profile, its head looked like a hybrid between a cat and a rabbit with a small brain-case and long Roman nose. Francis was convinced that it was a primitive unknown cat species. In fact, all the pictures I have seen show the Dufftown cat as having a triangular face, large ears and long nose and looking very much like a black Siamese or oriental cat (in addition to the facial similarity, Oriental cats are also slim and muscular with a long whip-like tail). It was apparently extremely ferocious and the gamekeeper had to shoot it from a distance.

In 1993 a similar cat was seen swimming after wildfowl near East Kilbride. The gamekeeper set his two dogs to scare the cat away. He claimed that the cat attacked the dogs so ferociously that he had to shoot the cat to protect his dogs from the assault. Francis referred to this cat as the second rabbit headed cat. Another rabbit-headed cat had apparently been killed by a gamekeeper on the Revack Estate and much earlier, in 1938 near Elgin, a gamekeeper attempted - and failed - to tame a feral kitten which photos showed to be a rabbit headed cat.

Although Francis suggests that the rabbit-headed black cats of Scotland are an undiscovered primitive species, it is more than likely that they are hybrids between Scottish Wildcats and Siamese-type domestics. Hybridisation probably occurred at a time when gamekeepers routinely shot Wildcats so that surviving Wildcats bred with any domestic cat available. Feral cats and Wildcats are ferocious when trapped, but reports of them being shot purely because of their ferocity endangering man or dog are probably an excuse since gamekeepers generally shoot feral or domestic cats on sight.