by J. M. Walker
“It’s better to do what they want,” the jaguar said to the leopard. “The more you impress, the better they treat you. You don’t want to become like the hippo. All it does is wallow. So the keepers don’t care about it. They don’t clean its pool and they only walk it to harvest its dung.”
“What does it matter?” asked the leopard again.
The jaguar’s whiskers dropped. She slowly descended the tree and lay next to the leopard, nuzzling him with her broad muzzle. She sighed.
The cats rested that way as more gentlemen passed by outside. One shouted at the cats, trying to rile them. Another took his cane and ran it along the wire, the fence reverberating as the human boasted to his associates about a new business deal he’d signed that morning next to the penguin pool. More humans came to stare as the zoo filled with visitors.
A familiar smell then wafted into the enclosure. It was the scent of a human, one who had washed. Both cats drew the scent over the glands in their mouths. The soapy fragrance couldn’t mask another smell; the stench of fear. The jaguar responded first, standing. The leopard pushed up off his haunches and turned into the wind. Both nosed at the air, recognising the body odour of the zoo administrator. He arrived dressed in his waxed moustache, finest black suit, waistcoat and trousers, holding a ledger under his arm. Two men gathered behind him, as he stared at the leopard with hateful, uncertain eyes.
“You guarantee he can’t get out?” said the administrator.
He was talking to the men but his gaze never left the leopard.
“It’s been double-locked,” said one of the men, nervously pulling at his beard. “The keys,” the man added, as he held up a set of small padlock keys on a ring.
The administrator snatched them from his grasp and pushed them deep into the pocket of his waistcoat.
“The King is due in an hour,” said the administrator. “Everything is in place. But if anything gets out. Anything! If even a flamingo steps out of its pool, we’ll be ruined.”
As the human spoke the leopard could see the cloth of his trousers shake. The cat couldn’t help himself. He let his tongue slip from his jaws, juice dripping from it. He started to pant, drawing deep purposeful breaths. He took a step towards the administrator, who nervously brought his ledger up to his chest as a shield. The leopard lifted another paw and smoothly shifted his weight on to it.
The administrator flicked open the book and pretended to scribble. But he couldn’t stop himself from again checking the cat, which had closed another ten feet. Suddenly he snapped shut the ledger and made off up the path, waving away his associates. The leopard watched him go, another small victory secured.
“What are you doing?” asked the jaguar. “Why are you scaring him? He decides how we are treated.”
“They all deserve it,” said the leopard.
“That may be,” said the jaguar. “But they control our lives. Perhaps you should have left when you had the chance.”
Her words cut deeper than any claws. The leopard turned and looked at her forlorn face. He realised how selfish he could be, how it was in his nature. So he made a pact with himself. He might not have long left, but he’d returned to give what he could to this beautiful cat, not to ruin her life. When the important person visited, he would put on a show. He’d use all his circus training and he’d perform one last time, making such an impression that the keepers would treat his jaguar with the dignity she deserved.
The leopard then caught another scent, animal not human. The hairs on his neck stood on end, his tail kicking into the air. It was a musky smell, heavy and rich.
“Do you recognise that?” he asked the jaguar.
“Dog,” she said. “Sometimes they are allowed in with the humans. If it comes near, try to ignore it,” said the jaguar. “Even if it baits you. They like to bait when they are safely behind a fence.”
“I know this dog,” said the leopard. “He’s no coward.”
As he spoke a white, black and tan terrier scampered along the path beside the cats’ enclosure. A saddle across its back, the dog shoved its brown head and white whiskers against a post holding up the fence. It cocked its leg and urinated. The leopard could smell it. He could see where lumps of fur had been taken from the dog’s coat and could still taste the wound healing on the dog’s hip.
The terrier froze. He too registered the cats. He raised his short white tail and leaned forward. He pulled back his gums and growled. He flicked his tail, searching deeper into his chest for an impressive bark. Behind the dog appeared a human, dangling a long black leather lead. He stood straight for a man nearing his sixth decade, swinging a cane for style not support. Carrying his black hat, he patted his waxed brown hair, parted down the centre. He tossed a black cape over one shoulder, revealing a white shirt underneath a black waistcoat supporting a pocket watch and chain. He walked up to the cats’ cage and put his fingers through the wire. He smiled, white teeth glinting from within a long trimmed beard that met grey hair above his ears.
“Lord Morgan,” rasped the old leopard.
He identified the human’s frame, Lord Morgan’s plump torso and legs fatter and sweeter than the administrator’s. The leopard sized Lord Morgan’s thighs, wishing how he’d had the chance to sink his cracked canines deep into their flesh, feeling the warmth of a severed artery. He heard Tony the terrier barking louder, intensifying the challenge. The leopard became so agitated he got the jaguar going too. She dropped her shoulders an inch, narrowed her eyes and prepared herself for whatever was to come.
“I know you,” said Lord Morgan. “And you know me. Don’t you boy?”
With that, he wandered off down the path. Tony the terrier stayed a while, staring down the cats, until he heard a harsh whistle. He showed his teeth then ran after his owner.
The encounter left the leopard shaking with rage. He hated to lose and felt he’d lost to the professor and his terrier. The jaguar asked why this human and dog had left him so angry. The cat explained how they had first visited his circus and taunted him in his cage set upon the circus wagon. The same evening, they had sat in the best ringside seats and watched him, marking his performance on a scorecard, a performance he’d faked to allow him to throw his collar. Then when he had attacked, the terrier had met him head on, doing enough to make him miss his mark, and let slip his prey. Now the human and dog had come to gloat, said the leopard. It was the only explanation.
The jaguar tried to console the leopard. But he was becoming agitated now, provoked by hunger. As a young cat, free to roam, he would eat well every few days. But since his capture, he’d been fed only morsels. Small regular bites but never a fresh corpse. He didn’t know what is was to regulate his appetite and the lust for meat was playing with his mind. Without realising it, the leopard had begun to pace his cage, and roar back at the tigers. The bigger cats took umbrage at his noise. Each time he roared, they answered, one by one asserting their dominance. The jaguar knew it was a game. She knew they would never meet. So she joined the leopard and together the cats of Africa and America jousted with those of Asia.
Their acoustic battle soon drew a crowd. Well-dressed gentlemen gathered to align themselves with such influence, ladies to be flattered by it. And then the crowd itself parted, deferring to a higher power. The men removed their tall hats and dropped them, bowing their necks. The ladies giggled then hastily bent their knees, curtsying. Out of the crowd emerged a portly man. He appeared more relaxed than those around him, dressed not in black, but in a matching tweed jacket and waistcoat with chequered trousers. A flat cap sat on his head and he carried a wooden walking stick. He acted as if he was out on a country stroll, while all about him the other humans acted as if at a great formal occasion.
The man approached the cats’ enclosure. He asked his entourage for a cigarette. Offered a silver box’s worth, he selected one, tapped it on his knee and wait
ed for it to be lit. He took a deep breath and enthusiastically blew a smoke plume in the direction of the leopard.
The cat understood. He looked at the man, opened his throat and sat back on to his hips. He sucked in the air and forced out the loudest roar he could. The tigers fell quiet. The man’s entourage became nervous and tried to usher him on. But the man in the flat cap laughed. He burned down more of the cigarette and blew again into the cage, the smoke this time drifting on and across the leopard’s nose.
The leopard slowly turned to face the man and lowered his body, becoming motionless apart from the black tip of his tail flicking. The jaguar understood now.
“Come on boy,” the man whispered. “Come on now.”
Like a whipped horse, the leopard sprang to life, racing head long at the fence, at the man just three feet behind. Every gentleman and lady standing about the man cowered, one even tripping over his shoes and falling on to his elbow, ripping a hole in his suit. But the man in the cap stood impassive.
“Come on boy!” he cried as the leopard leaped against the fence, straining the screws and wires holding it to the posts.
He felt the old leopard’s breath on his cheeks. For a moment the man met the leopard’s eyes. The man had always understood. He could never tame a leopard. He could never command it, make it do his bidding. He was exhilarated because the leopard understood a different order, a natural one.
The man leaned in and whispered again to the cat.
“I am the King of England. And if it weren’t for this fence, I would be your most humble subject.”
As he finished his words, a bright flash of light blinded him and the leopard. The old cat recoiled and danced across the enclosure to an area of shade. The King of England cursed under his breath as a photographer emerged from within a black curtain behind a static camera standing on a tripod.
“A wonderful picture, Your Highness. I have you facing down the beast.”
The King looked back at the cat. He gently raised a finger to his cap. He waited a moment. Then he dropped it, silently saluting the leopard and jaguar in the cage. He strode away as his entourage fumbled, consulting the day’s itinerary.
Edward didn’t know which way to turn. He tried to remember the schematic of the fort on the forest floor and map on to it what he knew of the zoo. He plotted in his mind the location of the entrance and tried to ascertain which wall he must have climbed over. But the inside of the zoo was busier than he’d imagined. He couldn’t work out where he now was in relation to the front gates. He strained his ears, good and bad, to listen for Doris, her heavy breathing or the sound of her huge body crushing gravel underfoot. He hoped to see Bessie fly by, conducting an unscheduled reconnaissance. All he could see were various humans wandering the gardens and big-billed birds flapping their wings in wired boxes while the pink birds slept. He heard a gorilla thumping its chest and a succession of tigers roaring.
He made to leave his bin and scuttle across the lawn. But he paused and considered what he could hear. He recalled that unlike lions, tigers didn’t live in prides. And they didn’t roar together without cause. He sat upon his bin and waited. They roared again, one after the other. But the first cry was different. Though higher pitched, it carried more weight. Soon it was overpowered by the sound of three troubled tigers. Yet it came again and Edward began to distinguish the author of each sound. His mind whirred and soon his body jumped a little off the bin. He recognised the cries of the old circus leopard, who was provoking the larger cats.
The monkey decided to recalibrate. He evaluated what he knew and weighed his options. He could spend time searching for the anteater, elephant and budgie, because that was part of the plan. Or he could head in the direction of the leopard’s cries. Because finding and then freeing the leopard was part of the plan too. Locating the leopard while his friends were still safely outside the zoological gardens was a less risky plan, he thought, than it was to seek them out, invite them in and begin the search again. So Edward watched the passing humans, and when they were busy pointing and laughing at the immobile pink birds, he left the bin and scarpered across the perfect lawn, shorn of all clover and daises.
Edward ran past a house holding a thousand frogs and another housing a hundred bats, each a giant compared to those he saw flitting about the Big Top in the English summer evenings. He saw a large pool of dirty water and smelled a hippo. As the monkey recognised the face of a tiger etched into a large wooden sign arching overhead, he realised he could no longer hear the cats roaring. He ran under the sign and on to a long straight path bisecting a wall and the tallest fence he had even seen, a fence Doris couldn’t touch the top of, even if she stretched her trunk.
Edward yelled and screeched in the hope the leopard could hear him. But the zoo was full of noises now as each cage of animals began to set off the next. Even a flock of seagulls swooping low ahead joined in the throng as they hunted for fallen ice cream cones.
Down the path, a large crowd of humans appeared. But they didn’t walk as one; they were led by a single man, wearing a tweed jacket and chequered trousers, twirling a walking stick. The leader was laughing and joking while those behind him laughed too, though less naturally. Edward froze on the path. He had nowhere to go, his escape routes blocked by a brick wall on one side and the tall fence on the other. He briefly thought to once more mimic a squirrel, as he’d done to avoid being seen on Lord Morgan’s lawn. The crowd kept coming, the portly bearded man waving his stick. Edward was left with no choice. He took to the fence and started to climb, exposing himself.
A man behind the leader noticed Edward and went to shout. But the leader suddenly spoke, and the man held his words.
“Where are these tigers?” the leader asked.
He stopped walking and the crowd behind struggled to avoid stumbling into his back. All the humans turned to peer into the space behind the tall fence, which enclosed a low escarpment of rocks, a pool of water, a maze of tall grass and three wooden platforms, nailed together out of stained fence posts.
Behind the man with the walking stick, the crowd parted as a tall, thin moustached man dressed all in black pushed through. He carried a ledger close to his chest, which he opened and began to read from.
“Your Highness, we have three tigers in this cage,” he read. “Two females are Royal Bengal tigers from India,” he said, pleased at what he had discovered. “The third is a large male, a Caspian tiger from the wilds of central Asia.”
As the leader looked at the man reading from the ledger, Edward saw his chance. The wire in the fence was awkwardly woven, being oddly spaced for Edward’s small arms and legs. But he clambered up, gently turning on to his side as he attempted to climb along the fence high above the crowd.
As Edward peered down at the humans, to see if they were peering up at him, he forgot to worry about what was on the other side of the fence. The wire suddenly went from under Edward’s fingers, slapped hard by something big. Edward felt his grip go. As his body left the fence it was caught by his tail, his fifth limb breaking his fall. Edward dangled, his head hanging. Just a foot below, a huge tiger was ramming the fence, trying to strike the monkey with its paw and catch his fur in its claws.
The crowd cheered, led by the man with the walking stick. But the man holding the ledger didn’t shout. The colour left his face as the tiger continued his attack on Edward. The man seemed perturbed not by the striped cat flailing its limbs just three feet away, but by the presence of the monkey it was trying to kill.
“Your Highness, the monkey...”
The administrator didn’t know what to say. He was saved by the grace of the King of England, who seemed unconcerned by the monkey being on the outside of a cage. Instead, the King laughed and joked, loving the sport. He started to cheer Edward, telling him to run before he became a tiger’s lunch. The crowd followed suit and soon a dozen finely dressed hum
ans were waving their hats, celebrating Edward’s great escape from the clutches of the big cat. The monkey took his moment, traversing the fence, moving faster until he felt brave enough to jump back down to the path behind the Royal party. As he ran on down the path, the administrator followed his movements with a pointed finger and open mouth.
Edward turned a corner to be confronted by another big cat standing in a cage of its own. This cat had white whiskers and a broad, serious face. Rosettes covered a body similar in size to the circus leopard, but thicker set. The cat seemed intrigued by the primate on the path. Edward, bred from generations of South American monkeys, instantly knew it to be a jaguar. And he knew he was positioned badly, caught on open ground as this jaguar stood above him. Edward had been around many exotic animals. He was clever enough to know their manner and how to avoid being seen as prey. But jaguars were different. They scared capuchins, even when imprisoned in an outsized cage.
This time a tree offered an escape. The monkey climbed it. Below, the old leopard languidly walked out from behind a bush to stand shoulder to shoulder with the jaguar. There was little left to do today, the cat thought, and perhaps tomorrow too.
Edward shrieked. He hadn’t seen the leopard since their last show days earlier at Whyte and Wingate’s circus. He ran along a branch and swung from it, hooting, calling at the cat, imploring him to look up. The leopard had heard enough noise for one day. He gently closed his eyes and collapsed his body onto his belly. He rested his chin on his leg and tried to blot out the sounds of the zoo.