French authorities have entered a third day in their hunt for a "big cat" that sparked panic this week after being sighted in the Paris suburbs.

Montevrain town hall official Cedric Tartaud said Saturday that the "danger level" has dropped for residents but couldn't say what kind of cat it is.

He adds that "a baby tiger is the size of an adult lynx, a baby lynx is the size of an adult domestic cat. At this stage, we haven't a clue."

The search was downscaled Friday evening, and police have put down their tranquilizer guns, after paw prints in the mud were identified as being too small for a tiger — the original theory as to the feline's identity.

The wild cat caught in several fuzzy photographs in Montevrain was spotted again on Friday, but it has eluded 200 police and military forces.

Police are hunting for a wild cat on the loose in Montevrain, east of Paris. (Google Maps)

Residents of Montevrain and two other nearby towns located near Disneyland Paris were urged to stay indoors — but most people seemed to be taking the cat hunt in stride.

One official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said "It's definitely not typical of the animals of this region."

One theory is that the mystery cat could be a lynx — the wild cat once omnipresent in France before being hunted out of existence. It was reintroduced in the 1970s, according to wildlife conservation group Ferus.

A 2003 survey by the National Office for Hunting and Wildlife estimated France's lynx population at about 170, located in mountainous areas of eastern France and the Alps. But the nearest known habitat, the Vosges Mountains, is 350 kilometres away from where the creature was spotted Thursday.