Lily to the Rescue: Lost Little Leopard

by W. Bruce Cameron

  “I know what Doctor Quinton said,” Maggie Rose finally replied.

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked.

  “He said that Nala can’t live without Lily. That we need to give Lily to the zoo so Nala will eat, and that when Nala gets old enough to go be in the program, Lily needs to go with her for a while.”

  “I didn’t realize you overheard us. Why didn’t you say something, Maggie Rose?”

  “I needed to talk to a game warden,” Maggie Rose explained.

  “I see,” Mom said.

  “So if it’s Lily’s duty to go live with Nala, she can go. But when Nala can live without my dog, Lily comes home,” my girl declared. “Okay?”

  There was a long silence. “Wow,” Craig said.

  I could feel everyone being worried and unhappy and I did not know what to do about it.

  “Oh, Maggie Rose,” Mom finally said with a sigh.

  After the day that Dad and his shoes came back, I started spending a lot more time at Zoo with Nala.

  Maggie Rose didn’t always come—usually on days when everyone said “School.” On those days I would only see Maggie Rose for a little while in the morning, and then a few hours before dinner and in the evenings. Both times she seemed sad. Even when I grabbed one of my favorite toys out from under her bed—an old pair of Craig’s socks tied together—and shook it in her face, she didn’t smile like she normally did.

  Jax, on the other hand, was full of energy. Every day he seemed bigger than he was the day before. And he still crashed into me as if he couldn’t figure out how to stop.

  “Jax went after a cat in a crate yesterday,” Mom told Dad after my girl and her brothers left to do School. “We were processing an adoption and the woman put the crate down just as I was bringing Jax in from the yard. He went completely wild on me, trying to get through the bars.”

  “Some dogs just don’t understand that cats can defend themselves,” Dad replied.

  “Jax sort of doesn’t understand anything. He loves Lily, though.”

  At Zoo Nala and I played all the usual cat games, and we almost always ended up doing Curl-Up-with-Lily. After that, Nala would drink her bottle of milk. I pretended I didn’t care that there was none for me. But I did.

  People decide where dogs go and what dogs do, and right now they had decided I needed to visit Nala and play cat games and visit Jax and play dog-crashing-into-dog games. That was all fine, but I wished I could make my girl happy again.

  My girl was so sad all the time that I gave up my post underneath Bryan’s legs at dinner and always stayed right next to her, leaning against her for comfort. One such evening the family was eating vegetables, which I don’t like, and spicy meat, which I do.

  “I have news. About the Amur leopard,” Dad announced.

  I felt my girl grow suddenly anxious and I nosed her hand.

  “We’ve got a home for her at the Land of the Leopard National Park. She’ll be transferred as soon as she’s a little bigger.”

  “Is that close?” my girl replied quietly.

  “I’m afraid not, Maggie Rose. It’s in Russia.”

  My girl got up from the table and ran into her bedroom. I went with her. I pressed up against her and tried to make her feel better, even though I had no idea what was wrong.

  The next morning, after everyone said “School,” Mom took Jax and me out into the yard at Work. This day, though, we were both on leashes. Jax chewed my ears and jumped over me and our leashes were all tangled before we even made it out the door.

  Once outside I smelled cat. Jax didn’t, because he was too busy gnawing on my face. I shook him off as Mom unclipped his leash. “Jax, I don’t think you ever met Mia.”

  I froze when I saw who was coldly watching us from across the yard.

  It was Bad Cat.

  Off leash, Jax scampered in circles, trying to entice me to play Chase-Me. Then he spotted the cat. Instantly he was charging joyously across the grass—planning, I supposed, to body-slam Bad Cat.

  But Bad Cat had other ideas.

  10

  Bad Cat’s eyes were slits and her mouth was open, her sharp teeth on clear display. Jax slowed because this was not the reaction he had been expecting. Suddenly, spitting and hissing, Bad Cat went after Jax, slashing at the air. Jax tumbled backward, fleeing, pure panic on his face. He was playing Chase-Me now, all right, but for Bad Cat it wasn’t a game. Yelping, Jax tried to get away, but Bad Cat wouldn’t let him. Finally the puppy ran and hid behind me, his tail down.

  Bad Cat sat in the middle of the yard and smirked. She knew she wouldn’t get any trouble from me, and Jax was trembling, peering around me at the threat.

  “Now you understand about cats, don’t you, Jax?” Mom said softly.

  The next day Maggie Rose did School while I went to Zoo to play with Nala. Mom gave Nala a bottle, of course. “We’re going to start you on solid food soon, little one,” she told Nala. I hoped she was saying that the next bottle would go to a good dog.

  After feeding the kitten, Mom went away and was gone for a while.

  I was sitting on top of Nala and gently tugging at one of her ears with my teeth when I smelled Mom returning. With her was another smell, one that I instantly recognized. Nala pushed me off with her powerful rear legs, but I didn’t want to do Wrestle more. I stared in disbelief at the gate to Nala’s yard.

  Oh no.

  Mom opened the cage. She had Jax in her arms. He was wiggling with excitement and licking Mom’s face and trying to tell her as plainly as he could that he wanted to get down and play.

  Now, in all my time at Zoo, I’d never seen or smelled another dog there. There were so many animals I couldn’t even count all the smells that came to my nose, but I was the only dog, always.

  Now there were two dogs here! What was going on?

  Mom put Jax on the ground and he came bounding over for a game of Crash-into-Lily. Then he pulled up short.

  He’d just seen Nala.

  Nala, larger than Bad Cat, stared at Jax. Jax lowered his head and padded up to me, taking a long route that kept him far away from Nala. He nosed me, worried.

  When Nala decided to investigate, Jax backpedaled away from her.

  I decided to demonstrate to Jax that Nala was not like Bad Cat. I climbed up on her and instantly we were playing, Jax completely forgotten. I put Nala on her back and she wrapped her legs around me and twisted away. She jumped on me and I flopped over on the ground, doing Brewster’s trick of pointing my feet into the air. Nala pounced on me.

  Movement caught my eye. It was Jax. He was crawling forward on his belly, unable to resist playing, even if he was still worried Nala might be mean.

  Nala and I both paused our wrestling and watched Jax. When he was close, I saw Nala’s rump go into the air, and I knew what was going to happen next.

  Pounce! It was a cat’s favorite game. Jax backed away in alarm, but then seemed to understand. Nala just wanted to play. He carefully lifted a paw and that’s all it took—now they were wrestling.

  “Come here, Lily,” Mom called gently.

  I happily trotted over to the gate and Mom opened it. Then I sat and watched Nala and Jax tumble. Nala was underneath, but she squirmed out and ran to her pile of boulders and in a single bound leaped to the top. Jax looked up at her in astonishment. Wagging, he yipped, and then Nala pounced on Jax and they were back to doing Wrestling.

  I knew Nala well enough to be able to tell when she was getting tired. As far as I knew, Jax never got tired, but when he went to the pool for a drink of water, Mom said, “Okay, Lily, let’s see if this worked.”

  Mom went into the cage and sat down, a familiar-smelling bottle in her hand. Jax joyously dashed over to see her, and Nala, unable to resist an animal running, pounced on him. Together they landed in Mom’s lap, and then Nala caught sight of the bottle and went limp.

  Mom had to keep shoving Jax’s face out of the way, but she was able to give Nala the whole bottle. While she was doing so, a man came
up to stand next to me to watch. It was Dusty Pants. He had on different pants, but they were still dusty. Mom stood up and came over to us while Jax and Nala resumed playing.

  “Hello, Chelsea,” Dusty Pants said.

  Mom smiled through the bars. “I realized that we were all so happy with how Lily relates to other animals, we didn’t even think about whether another dog would do. I decided that Nala would probably play with any puppy.”

  “That you were able to feed our leopard proves that you were right,” Dusty Pants agreed.

  Mom turned and watched the cat and dog play. “Lily was the runt of the litter. I started thinking about what will happen when Nala grows up—she’ll be huge compared to Lily. But Jax has thick legs and enormous feet—he’s going to be big, big enough to wrestle with an adult leopard.” Mom turned back to Dusty Pants. “And yes, the zoo may adopt Jax. I’ll even come out and continue to train him. He needs it.”

  Mom opened the gate. She knelt and put a leash into my collar with a snick. She smiled at me. “I know someone who is going to be very happy about all this,” she told me.

  “Lily!”

  It was my girl! I wagged and shook myself off and went to the end of my leash to greet her as she ran up the cement path to where I was waiting at the gate. Dad was coming up behind her, grinning. She dropped to her knees and wrapped me in her arms.

  I sighed in contentment. I loved Maggie Rose.

  “Dad picked me up from school and brought me straight here,” Maggie Rose said. “He said you have a surprise?”

  Maggie Rose stood up. I gazed up at her fondly. Dad reached out and grabbed the hand of Dusty Pants. “Hello, Doctor Quinton.”

  “Good to see you again, James,” Dusty Pants said.

  “What’s the surprise?” Maggie Rose asked.

  “Look who is in the enclosure with Nala,” Mom replied.

  11

  “Jax!” Maggie Rose gazed up at her mother in wonder. “You put Jax in the cage with Nala?”

  Mom nodded. “They’re going to be great friends.”

  “Look at the two of them,” Dad said. “Finally Jax has met his match.”

  We all watched Jax and Nala play for a while. I wondered if I should get back in there and really entertain everyone, but no one opened the gate.

  “All right, I’ve got to get back to work,” Dad said.

  “Me, too,” Mom agreed. “Maggie Rose? Do you want to come help me? We just got in some guinea pig babies, and we have to figure out which are the boys and which are the girls so we can separate them—we don’t want more guinea pig babies!”

  “Can Lily come, too?”

  “Of course! Lily’s your dog.”

  Maggie Rose was not sad anymore! I’d done it! I’d finally made my girl happy!

  “Let’s let Lily in to go say goodbye to Nala and Jax,” Mom suggested.

  “Can’t we bring Lily back for visits?”

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t want to confuse things. Jax is Nala’s dog now—he’s not going back to the rescue, or anywhere else. Soon Nala will forget all about Lily, which is what we want. Jax will go to Russia with her when she’s old enough, and he’ll be her companion for life.”

  Mom opened the gate and I slipped inside. Nala and Jax had fallen into an exhausted heap and were cuddled up for a nice nap together. Nala picked up her head to watch me approach, but Jax didn’t stir.

  The way Maggie Rose was acting gave me the feeling that I would not get to see Nala again.

  This happens to me sometimes. I will get to know another animal and even love that animal, but then my girl will be in a wistful mood and steer me to touch noses one last time, and then the animals have to leave for different places to live different lives.

  It happened to me first with my mother and brothers and sisters. It happened to me with a squirrel that I knew named Sammy, and a skunk that Maggie Rose called Stinkerbelle, and a couple of piglets, and a lot of baby geese who thought I was their mother.

  I don’t really understand it. Sometimes I wish all my animal friends—Stinkerbelle and Casey and Nala and the piglets and all the baby geese (even though they were a little annoying at times) could just come Home and live there. We’d all have bowls in the kitchen for our own food and we’d all sleep in Maggie Rose’s bed, cuddled up with her legs.

  But that has only happened once. Only Brewster ever came Home and stayed. The other friends eventually all had to go away.

  Probably that is because all dogs are more wonderful than all other animals.

  Except maybe Jax.

  When I bent my head down, Nala rubbed the top of her head against my cheek. Jax opened one sleepy eye and his tail twitched, but that was his only reaction.

  I realized in that moment just how much I loved this large kitten. She had come into the world afraid, but she had trusted me enough to play and tumble with me like any other cat, and now she was no longer timid and scared. I felt a little like I was the mother that Nala never had.

  And now we were leaving each other. Nala and I stared at each other for a long, long moment, and then I returned to my girl.

  Maggie Rose and Mom and I left the building and walked on the winding paths. Usually I was on my leash for this part, but this time Maggie Rose carried me and kept holding and hugging me. I didn’t mind too much, even when we walked past a bit of pizza on the ground under a bush and I didn’t get to go and eat it. It was so nice to have my girl be happy.

  “I didn’t want to tell you until I had permission from the zoo to try it out,” Mom explained. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up, Maggie Rose, in case they didn’t want to try another dog instead of Lily. And then there was the question of whether Nala would accept a Rottweiler puppy. But they act like they’ve been friends their whole lives. It went even better than I was hoping.”

  “So Lily can really stay at home with us?” Maggie Rose asked, squeezing me a little tighter.

  Mom put her arm around Maggie Rose’s shoulders so we were all in the hug together. “Oh, yes, of course. Lily can stay.”

  We slipped into the car, and I curled up on Maggie Rose’s lap in the back seat. I was tired from all my playing and a little sad, too, even though I was with my girl. I felt that something had gone away.

  But my girl had not gone away, and that was what was most important.

  “I bet Lily will miss Nala, though,” Maggie Rose said, stroking my back. “It’s like she’s lost her baby, kind of.”

  “We will all miss Nala,” Mom said from the front of the car, which began moving.

  “Lily is my baby,” my girl proclaimed. “Are you my baby, Lily?”

  Maggie Rose reached into an open bag that lay beside her on the seat. She pulled something out. It was a bottle, and it was full of milk! Maggie Rose flipped me onto my back, Brewster-style, and pulled me into her lap. I went willingly, my nose twitching.

  She put the bottle near my face and I grabbed hold of the tip with my teeth quickly, before she could change her mind.

  The milk that squirted into my mouth was rich and delicious and marvelous, just as I had always known it would be.

  Sometimes it takes people a while to figure out what to do, but they usually get there in the end. Finally, Maggie Rose understood that bottles were not just for large cats—they were for good dogs, too.

  And I was a very, very good dog.

  MORE ABOUT AMUR LEOPARDS

  All leopards have spots. They are called rosettes.

  Leopards look a lot like jaguars, but you can tell the difference by looking at their spots. Jaguars have a spot in the center of each rosette. Leopards do not.

  Leopards are nocturnal. They hunt at night and sleep or rest during the day, often up in trees.

  Leopards are the smallest of the big cats. (The other big cats are lions, tigers, and jaguars.)

  A leopard mother usually has two to three cubs at a time. They weigh a little more than one pound when they are born. The cubs stay with the mother for about two years, u
ntil they are old enough to hunt for themselves.

  Wild leopards are found in Africa and Eurasia. Amur leopards, like Nala, live in eastern Russia and northern China. They are named after the Amur River, which runs along the border between the two countries.

  Amur leopards usually live between ten to fifteen years in the wild. In a zoo, like Nala, one might live to be twenty.

  Leopards are amazing jumpers. Amur leopards have been known to leap up to nineteen feet in one bound—that’s like jumping over three adults lying head-to-toe on the ground.

  All leopards are carnivores and eat meat. Amur leopards hunt deer, wild pigs, mice, and rabbits.

  Amur leopards are very endangered. There are fewer than a hundred left in the wild.

  READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT

  LILY TO THE RESCUE:

  THE MISFIT DONKEY,

  COMING SOON FROM STARSCAPE

  “Oh, look, here comes Ringo! Doesn’t he look handsome!”

  The new arrival was a little like a horse, but he had a much longer neck and a smaller head. His fur was fuzzy and looked soft. His head was up so high, it was taller than even the taller of the two boys.

  We get a lot of animals coming and going at Work, but this one was one of the strangest-looking. I was about to trot over to greet it and the new boys, but Maggie Rose called me and I went to her side, since that’s what good dogs do.

  “Is that a llama?” Bryan asked.

  “Yep. Name’s Ringo. Would you like to pet him? He was over at the neighbor’s place, getting his coat groomed,” Kelly replied.

  “I saw him when I was here before. He didn’t want to play with Lily,” Maggie Rose added.

  Kelly waved her hand. “Let Ringo loose, boys! And come on over.”

  The taller boy unclipped the horse-thing’s leash and it immediately trotted over to where Scamper, Dash, and the donkey were still wrestling in the grass. All three stopped playing to see what this new animal would do.

  The horse-thing ignored the pigs. It came right toward the little donkey, stamping with its hard hooves.