Woman baffled by mysterious animal footprints from cat flap

A woman who keeps her cat flap open so her pet can come and go as it likes was staggered after discovering a series of unexplained footprints on her kitchen floor. Ellie Morton, from Stockport, had been away for several nights and left her dad in charge of looking after her cat – and he was the one to stumble upon the puzzling sight.

“My dad went round to feed my cat and my kitchen looked like this,” she began in a video, highlighting the trail of muddy footprints leading to her pet’s food dishes. “If anyone knows what animal these prints look like that’d be great.” Ellie continued her video, focusing on one of the footprints – which clearly weren’t make by a cat. “I’m sorry, what?” she exclaimed, “whose is that?”

The prints, marked by notably large sharp claws, seemed to be roughly the size of a small human hand. Ellie also revealed that the trail extended into her living room and “made a right mess”.

She concluded by informing her followers that she had subsequently purchased an outdoor camera to monitor any activity near her door. Ellie later told Newsweek: “He [her father] initially thought it was a fox or a badger.”

Ellie went on: “However I’d been complaining that I kept hearing my cat flap opening and closing for weeks when my cat was sitting with me. So I already suspected something had been coming in. This just added to our suspicions.”

The clip has since racked up more than 700,000 views. Writing in response, one TikTok user confidently stated: “That’s a badger 100 per cent.”

A second person asked: “Could it be a badger? They have have pointy nails and those paw prints also have five.”

And a third person was of the same opinion: “From the size of the print and number of claws I’m going to say badger. It’ll be looking for food. Glad your cat’s ok because badgers are aggressive.”

Others, however, speculated that the markings were merely from a boot heel rather than any type of creature. “It’s a heel of a boot, you can see the rounded outline (where you are saying the claws are),” one TikTok user suggested.

Another agreed: “They’re boot prints. not claws. You can even see the outline of the front of the boot in one photo.” And another person claimed: “It’s literally the print of the Doc Martens heel you can see on the right side in the video.”

Nevertheless, Ellie responded: “Doesn’t look anything like that in my opinion. We thought badger! Looks almost identical to anything I find on Google.”