26 oktober 2023 Lion

 
    Years ago, I had a big old yellow-orange colored cat that I ever had the pleasure to know. I think its name was Cat. How he arrived here I don't remember; how he departed, is an equal mystery, but I'm thinking it was on his own terms for I never knew him to be indecisive; he was a very purpose-driven being, especially when it came to having fun ...

   I was sleeping one mid-morning in my little mobile home here on the farm, when I was awakened by a loud snort of a deer right outside my bedroom. I slid out of the bed quietly and eased slowly to the window at the end of the trailer. 

   Just over ten feet away stood a Whitetail doe, her nerves all ajangle, her ears forward, her front legs stiff and every muscle in her body tense. She was staring at something out of my line of sight, near the corner of the house -- and acting like the something was staring back. What was it? 

   The doe stood on its hind legs just long enough to bring its front hooves off the ground, stomp them down, and snort with a ‘whoosh!’ through her nose. Feigning a charge, she suddenly wheeled away and came right back to where she had been, never taking her eyes off the thing she saw. I ever so slowly craned my neck left to see, stepping up on the waterbed for a better look at them both; it was Cat.

   Cat lay as still as stone, its paws straight out ahead of its body like a sphinx. Its tail was straight out behind it and his eyes were dutifully fixed on the doe who was, by this time, almost convinced that the cat wasn’t real.

   Minutes ticked by. The doe had edged, snorted, stomped and whirled its way to about five feet of Cat who all the while lay stock-still, a vision of pure discipline abiding its time.

   Then I saw the telltale tensioning of its thighs; the ever so slight curl of its tail at the very tip; its body rising off the ground, incrementally.

   The doe, her nose out straining for some scent of reality, nostrils quivering; her neck stretched out beyond her body -- her stiffened  front legs and trembling back legs inching forward with great tentative motion when --the cat leaped at the doe its claws and front legs extended as though an airborne lioness upon an unwary gazelle at an African waterhole, its tail in a sweeping arc, its back claws splayed from take-off, an image burned into my memory against green grass and blocks of sunshine from between the trees in the yard.

   The wide-eyed doe looked astonished. Both its back hooves stabbed the sod and wrenched the doe’s head and body from danger in an instant, whirling one hundred eighty degrees, its rear legs recoiling like fluid pistons launched the deer into full flight off the ground, bounding away, its ears back; its white flag tail a flurry of explosive side-to-side motions, its front legs pumping, grabbing, clawing for traction to get away.

   The doe ran into the yard past the big spruce tree, almost to the lane; her chest heaving, her tail erect. She ran in a stiff-legged gait in a far arcing circle, then came back bounding and snorting, tossing her head angrily, and charged the cat ... who laid stock-still in the grass by the corner of the house, not moving a muscle.   

   They had done this before; it was a game repeated. When it ever started is anyone's guess but may have been played with others as well, as another time I saw it played out with a doe and her two fawns; the fawns as the pawns, perhaps by both the cat and the doe ...

  A doe and her two fawns were eating grass in the yard near the old garage, where on the northside of the garage were stored several lengths of lumber on a rack. On one of the boards laid Cat, still as stone. One of the fawns with its sibling in tow, tentatively approached the cat. Nervously, as their mother had obviously taught them to be wary of strangers, one fawn more so than the other, urged its opposite to check out the 'thing' on the board, but chickened out preferring to tell its mother about it instead; who after several 'alerts' from her pests had admonished them pummeling each one with her hooves, and had resumed with all her confidence the lesson, taught, then turned her attention back to the grass below her nose ... when the cat leapt through the air at the fawns, and they simultaneously leapt 180 degrees into their mom!