Realistic tiger on upper arm and shoulder

You will not believe what came down Canal Street at quarter past two. I was on the late bus back from the depot, the one that stops outside the closed-down Odeon, and I saw the thing through the glass before I understood it. Grey stripes, long as a man laid flat, moving along the kerb as if it had paid for the pavement. Mrs Okafor from the flats above the chippy swears it stopped under her window and looked up at her light for a full minute.

The police have put out nothing in the paper, which tells me they have not caught it. Mr Pryce at the zoo lost a male from the Kasiyo enclosure last Tuesday and has been up every night since with a torch and a tin of something that smells of fish. He says the animal will go for water and for warm places, the boiler vents behind the tannery and the railway cutting where the foxes sleep. I walked the towpath after my shift with Dad's old lamp and found only a pawprint in the mud, spread wide and as big as my hand, and a single pale hair caught on the railing.

I did not tell anyone I was going out again. I stood on the bridge at the bottom of Mill Lane and waited, and I will admit I was not frightened the way I should have been. When the lamp lit the water I saw two pale coins of light move under the arch, steady and unhurried, and then there was nothing but the hum of the streetlights and the river going about its business.

I have left the back door open and a saucer of milk on the step, which Mum will say is daft. Write back soon. I want to know if you think it came for the milk or for the view.

Love, Jo