The lion cub that was found in a field near Tienhoven on Sunday had been offered to an animal sanctuary in Friesland on the preceding Friday, RTL Nieuws reports.

The Stichting Viervoeters in Nijeberkoop was contacted by an anonymous caller and asked to pick up the animal in Utrecht. However, it could not take the cub in because it is against safety rules to take in unlicenced animals.

‘We would have taken the cub if it had been left on our doorstep,’ the sanctuary’s director Barbara van Genne told the Telegraaf. The cub was subsequently found in a cage in a field by a jogger.

It is not clear where the cub, which is now housed by big cat charity Stichting Leeuw, originally came from. ‘It probably came from a circus or small zoo,’ a spokesman  told RTL. ‘I don’t think someone is keeping a pair of lions in their back garden. The roar of a male lion can be heard for miles around.’