Leopard's Kin

by Becky Norman

  “What are you doing, you silly cat? Get in where it’s warm!”

  He meowed plaintively at her and looked longingly across the wind-swept yard to the barn. For him, the distance in the already-deep snow must have seemed a vast expanse and Lori hesitated for a moment, trying to decide how best to provide assistance.

  “Well, I’ll help you,” she called to him through the wind, “but you’ll have to let me carry you. Are you ready for that?”

  He meowed again – loudly – and she squatted down beside him, letting her hands fall to her sides in an unthreatening posture. She had vowed that by Christmas she’d be touching this cat and they certainly had reached that level of friendship with Noel’s help, but to pick up a feral cat was a whole different element of trust.

  On instinct, Lori unzipped her vest, demonstrating to Bear how warm and comforting it would be to let her pick him up and the brown tabby did tentatively step into the shelter of her arms. She waited until he chose to step up onto her bent knee himself and then she slowly, calmly scooped him up and held him for a moment against her chest. She remained squatting for a time so that if he did decide he didn’t care for this he wouldn’t have to push too far away and fall, but he stayed close to her and she got up.

  By the time she got him back to the barn he was actually purring against her but she didn’t overstay her welcome – as soon as they got inside by the horses, she walked over to several stacks of hay and turned him loose.

  Bear slipped out of her hands and onto a hay bale nearby, still purring, and Lori grinned at him with a shake of her head.

  “You never cease to amaze me, cat,” she murmured. “Let me get you some food and then we’re calling it a night.”

  The wind sounded awful outside as she and the kittens burrowed down into the duvet in Lori’s bedroom about an hour later. Lori had gotten a good fire going in the furnace, made a quick vegetable stir fry for supper, and changed into her pyjamas, knowing she wasn’t going anywhere for the rest of the night.

  She had eaten supper in bed, watching the TV Cody had discreetly placed in the corner of the room, contrary to Lori’s initial protests. She was glad of the false company now, though – the steady droning of some cop show was making her feel not-so-alone. Leia was lying snuggled against her hip and Luke was draped against her feet but none of that could replace the comfort of another big body in the bed.

  Lori sighed and hesitated about turning out the light. It was bad enough to hear the wind outside and the quiet of the house; when it was dark, as well, she felt like the last person alive in the world, cut off from the rest of civilization.

  “Please keep me safe,” she whispered to Whomever was listening. Then, in sudden inspiration, she thought of Mist and how Noel had said the spirit cats could be summoned at will.

  Well, no time like the present for some experimentation, she thought. “Mist,” she said aloud, “if you can hear me, I sure would like your company tonight.”

  Luke and Leia both came fully awake when they heard Lori’s voice; her skin crawled at their reaction and there was a brief moment of panic for her when she realized what she might have done. When the kittens both moved to the edge of the bed and sat there, looking at the bedroom door in anticipation, Lori’s heart began to pound in her chest.

  The creaking on the stairs sent her into sheer, blind terror and when she saw the face of the snow leopard push the bedroom door open further, Lori had to bite down on a scream. She was frozen by the big cat’s presence – she felt like a snow hare, trapped in the feline’s gaze – but her kittens felt no qualms whatsoever and had jumped down to welcome their surrogate mother.

  Mist rubbed her head against them in greeting, causing Lori to relax just a fraction, even though she clutched the duvet tightly against her. The snow leopard looked over to her, the expression eloquent on the big cat’s face. You called me here, she seemed to say. Did you mean it or not?

  “Okay, I meant it,” Lori whispered. “I just didn’t expect you so…quickly.”

  Her spirit-friend padded over to the bed and in a sudden flourish of muscle and sinew jumped onto Cody’s side of the mattress. She stood over Lori for a moment, looking calm, regal…and just about like the best bodyguard in the world and Lori couldn’t help smiling.

  “Well, make yourself comfortable,” she invited. “We’re all in this together.”

  And with that, the big grey cat and the two little tabbies sank down on the mattress, settling in against Lori as she turned off the light, secure in the knowledge that whatever happened, she wasn’t alone.

  **********

  The next morning, Mist left as Lori was making breakfast, leaving no trace of a track on the newly fallen snow. Lori even restrained herself enough to not phone Noel to tell him about it, though she did record it in her journal. The snow had continued throughout the night and they were starting to get legitimate banks and drifting across the roads and fields. She could see one of her neighbours out with his tractor, pumping big white geysers of snow out of his driveway with his industrial blower. She fervently hoped he would stop by and at least cut her a path to the road since just blowing the smaller trails back to the barn would take her most of the day.

  So much for training the horses today, she thought ruefully. She’d struggle through the drifts this morning to feed them and then return to do a thorough job with the snow blower, but she’d be lucky to have made a wide path to the barn by noon and then stalls had to be cleaned and she’d have to turn them out in the indoor arena for some exercise together.

  Given the day she had ahead of her, she almost wept for joy when her neighbour did in fact pull into her driveway a short time later. She waved to him and came out with a steaming thermos of coffee in gratitude.

  “Thanks so much for clearing my driveway, Pete,” she shouted above the din of his tractor. She handed the thermos up to the grey-haired, bespectacled farmer and he gave her a small salute with the mug once he had some coffee poured.

  “Not a problem, Lori,” he assured her after taking a deep swallow. “We have to look out for each other on days like today, don’t we?”

  She nodded. “You got that right – I just wish I could do more than give you some coffee! What kind of beer do you drink?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Nah, I’m more of a rye guy myself.”

  “Will do – next time I’m at the liquor store, I’ll remember you!”

  He ducked his head to take another sip of the coffee. “Hey – you haven’t heard anymore about that cougar, have you?” he called before putting the tractor back into gear. “I remember we had quite a scare around here back in the summer. The missus was asking me about it this past weekend.”

  Lori stuffed her hands into the pockets of her down vest and shook her head. “No, I think he’s gone for good.”

  “That’s good,” he affirmed. “Well, guess I’d better get back to it – there’re a few more neighbours I want to get cleared out yet this morning.”

  “Okay,” she called. “I should get going, too – I’ve got to make a trail to the barn yet.”

  Pete paused and looked down at her. “What’re you using? That big snow blower I saw you struggling with the other day?”

  She nodded.

  “D’you want me to come back later and clear that out for you, too? I don’t mind.”

  Lori shook her head with a smile on her face. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. I can do it myself.”

  Pete put in the clutch and shoved the tractor into gear. “Suit yourself,” he answered. “Just let me know if you need help!”

  Lori gave him the thumbs up and turned back to the house, confident that that was one call she wouldn’t have to make.

  **********

  While the horses were playing in the indoor arena and Curtis’ stallion was safely tucked away inside a makeshift holding pen she’d set up at one end with roundpen panels, Lori
headed back to the house. With the arrival of Mist last night after Lori’s beck and call, she thought it was about time she did some real research on snow leopards. She sat down in the living room with her laptop and ate a hot dog to tide her over; then she started to peruse what the experts had to say.

  Most of it was similar to what Noel and Jeret had already told her – snow leopards were solitary cats, preferring to spend most of their lives alone. They were shy, elusive and no known documented cases existed where a snow leopard had ever attacked a human. Lori took a small sense of comfort from that fact. She was also intrigued to read that unlike other large cats, snow leopards were incapable of roaring, but could make a puffing sound through their nostrils called prusten.

  Snow leopards’ main prey were the mountain goats and ibex also found across the mountain ranges of Asia that the big cats called home; this meant that the cats had adapted not only to extremely cold temperatures, but were capable of astounding feats of bravery as they barrelled down steep slopes and jumped onto narrow ledges. They were even known to leap up to 30 feet, which was six times their own body length, in order to attack prey.

  According to the Snow Leopard Trust website, Lori was startled to realize that nobody had a clear sense of just how many leopards still existed in the wild – estimates ranged from 3500 to 7000 – because the cats were that elusive. Then, too, between upset herders who killed them for attacking their sheep, and poachers who hunted them for their pelts and bones (which were used in Asian medicine), their numbers were anticipated to be dramatically decreasing. Lori was so moved by the information she read – and the haunting images she saw that reminded her immediately of Mist – that she made a donation as soon as she finished scanning the site.

  It wasn’t until she found the stories of the pari legends, however, that Lori felt her skin grow cold. According to the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, north India and central Asia, the pari – or what they called mergichan – were female supernatural creatures dwelling in the mountain ranges and high pastures of their lands. Humans were only allowed to enter the mergichan realm in the summer – and they had to obtain permission from the mergichan in order to do so. It was believed by the native peoples of these regions that the pari assumed the forms of various animals, one of which was the snow leopard.

  One of the others, however, was a horse.

  Lori uttered a sound of wonderment, riveted by the account that followed, where the son of a man visited by pari told of their coming to his father. The family claimed the father had a snow leopard that visited him as a spirit animal. All the hairs on the nape of Lori’s neck stood erect with those words.

  In the evening, the son related, my father went to the spring for water. When he was there, he saw a woman with a white scarf, a pitek. He hid in a low area and stayed there a long time, looking.

  “What sort of thing was this?” he thought. People never came there, so a woman would never go there either. Then his uncle came and he said to him, “O Uncle, a woman came here, a woman with a white scarf stood here, and now she has vanished.” He said, “Ya Maula, what can it be?”

  Well, night fell and they ate dinner and slept. They had nothing but an old blanket. They both covered themselves with that, and slept. In the night, my father dreamt that two horses came with two riders. He dreamt one horse came and passed over him, and one came and sunk its teeth into his leg. He awoke suddenly and something heavy was on his body. He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t. It was very heavy. He was still half-asleep, and he moved a little, then shook his blanket and saw a snow leopard, sitting on top of him. And it moved off of him and slowly went outside. It went out, and he felt a lot of pain. He said, “O Uncle, wake up! My leg hurts, something attacked me. Go out and shine a light.”

  He got up and they made a fire, and saw a lot of blood from his wounds. He was very scared. He said, “What did this to me?” They sat a while, but it didn’t return. Then they closed the door with a stone and slept. While they slept, it grabbed the door and tossed the stone aside. It came and yanked their blanket and took it down to the trees. Then they got up and made a fire.

  “O God, what is this thing?” they said. They saw it, resembling a snow leopard. It came towards the door of the hut and his uncle was going to shoot it when he fainted. Then the snow leopard became a horse and went away. They sat, waiting until it grew light.

  Their companions were at the settled area down river, where they cultivated barley. People were there for harvesting. My father went there, and said, “Someone come with us, and give us a dog, too, we are frightened.” They refused to come. He took a dog and tied it at the door that night. At night, the leopard came again and it grabbed that dog and tossed it far away. Again it came and wouldn’t let them sleep all night long.

  At dawn, they returned to Shimshal. There, the khalifa, or spiritual leader, said that it was a pari. The pari put itself in a snow leopard’s skin and attacked them like that.

  Then what happened to my father? Then it happened like this, that this pari was with him continuously. It came as a snow leopard. I and my brother Shifa, we both saw it. Our father was with us, at Arbab Purien. We were there together when it came. I saw it first and said, “Ya Ali, what thing has come? A snow leopard.” It stood on the far side and didn’t come near us. Then it turned and left. And until my father’s dying day, that pari was with him, never a danger but always there. A pari in the shape of a snow leopard. That pari was ready to make friends with him, so whenever he was preparing to hunt somewhere, that pari would visit at night in a dream and say, “In such and such place go and hunt. To such and such place don’t go and hunt, no game is there.” Whether ibex, or whether small game, he would go and it would be there. Such miraculous things happened with him. You can ask other Shimshalis if such things were or not. They will tell you. Up until his death, this was with him.

  Then it ended when he went from this world. Now it is no longer like this with us. Pari are not close to us. We live more at ease. My father was different. A snow leopard came to him. This event occurred.”

  Lori lifted her head from where it had been bent in absorption as she read and stared off into space. The snow leopard became a horse and went away. What on earth were the coincidences of all this, she wondered. What was happening here? Where a snow leopard visits her in dreams then comes to her in real life when she calls? What were the odds of her being female and so unwittingly connected to horses throughout her childhood...and then reading that the pari were interconnected with both horses and snow leopards, too?

  Lori connected her printer to the laptop and printed the story she’d just read, folding it neatly up and tucking it into the journal that Noel had bought for her. She would have to talk to him about this one – it was too much of an oddity to be filed away. Even if he couldn’t answer her questions, at least another person on the planet could sympathize with what she was going through.

  Chapter 21

  The next morning, she had a whole lot more to add to her journal. She had dreamt of the snow leopard again – she knew now that it was Mist who was visiting her in sleep, but this particular dream had involved a cat she’d never seen before, as well.

  The dream had started back by the volcano, where Lori had been panning for gold in her first dream. Mist’s white tip of a tail was still luring her on through the darkness and Lori was still jogging along behind, trying to keep up.

  They crested a small hill and Lori could see a lightening of the darkness up ahead; she realized that the pre-dawn was starting and cocked an ear to listen to the birds begin their dawn chorus. She paused for a moment, catching her breath, and Mist stopped, turned back and looked at her with a silent intensity that seemed to say, we must hurry.

  Lori nodded, still heaving, and took a few more valuable gulps of air before resuming her trot. They continued on as the sun crept closer and closer to the horizon, but the light was still a soft, muted blend of deep blues and greys when Mist sto
pped abruptly, raised her head to catch a scent, and puffed softly through her nostrils. She turned on a 45-degree angle from where they had been following the path, staring into the thick jungle foliage off to their right, and waited.

  Lori peered into the shadows of the rainforest as she bent over, hands on knees, sucking in air. As her breathing began to still, she walked up to Mist and lightly rested a hand on the great cat’s prominent shoulder blade, seeking comfort in her company as they waited. There was a sense of anticipation and a slight tremor of fear or tension throughout the woods, as though every creature within a 5-mile radius knew what was coming and would rather not be a part of it. It made Lori uneasy, too.

  She squeezed Mist’s shoulder and sent her a silent question: should we run? Mist simply looked at her with those soulful, calm eyes and took another step towards the jungle, putting herself between whatever was out there and her human.

  The snow leopard made another huffing sound and drew alert, her thick, rounded ears pricking to attention as she heard something in the jungle. Lori strained her own ears to hear, but nothing came to her. The great cat leaned ahead on one front paw, her long rope of a tail swishing gently around both her and Lori, her entire body denoting action coiled and waiting for release.

  Lori saw Mist’s whiskers twitch and she craned her head forward, trying to see what the leopard so obviously heard, and it was then she saw the wide, masculine head solidify itself from the shadows with a body that followed, seeming to collect itself and form from the ether around them. Lori gave a soft intake of breath and the creature’s liquid gold eyes sharpened on her as it came padding out of the vegetation.

  It took her a moment in the dream to identify what it was, but when she saw the black rosettes on its otherwise yellow-gold fur, she knew. It was confirmed a moment later in the sighing of the birds nearby. Jaguar, they called with a fatalistic tone to the word that struck fear in Lori’s heart.

  She swallowed thickly and burrowed her hand in Mist’s fur, holding on to the one friend she knew instinctively could protect her.

  The jaguar came steadily, boldly forward. This was his place and all who resided here knew that and respected it. She and Mist coming had disrupted a finely-honed balance in this region.