Exclusive: secretive artist trying to raise a smile with pelicans, elephants, monkeys, wolf, goat and cat

A big cat by Banksy appeared briefly, ­stretching in the morning sun, on a bare advertising hoarding on Edgware Road in Cricklewood, north-west London, on Saturday. A few hours later it had gone, removed by contractors who feared it would be ripped down.

The anonymous artist known as Banksy, who confirmed the image was his at lunchtime on Saturday, also promised a little more summer fun to come.

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It began with the silhouette of a goat perched atop a narrow wall near Kew Bridge in London, with tumbling rocks signifying the animal’s perilous position.

Over the course of the week, more silhouettes began popping up around the capital: two elephants with their trunks reaching towards each other from blocked-out windows on the side of a house in Chelsea; three monkeys swinging across a bridge on Brick Lane; and a wolf howling towards the sky, painted onto the face of a satellite dish on Peckham’s Rye Lane.