Trooper

by Forrest Bryant Johnson

  The cat was not concerned. He smelled death and his nose confirmed the victory. While humans, in checking for life, feel for a pulse at the neck or wrist, or listen for a heartbeat, the cat uses his keen senses and checks for breathing.

  Trooper backed away from the dead coyote with his eyes wide and ears erect once more. He turned and slowly walked in the direction of the kitchen door, pausing only to rub his cheek against my leg. I was so proud of him. I thought nothing of the blood stain left on my pants leg by his gesture of friendship.

  “Good boy, Trooper,” was all I managed to say.

  Little Brother leaped from the tree and, ignoring the dead coyote, ran to catch up with his hero. With his golden tail held straight up, he joined Trooper’s side and they both began a trot to the house.

  Teri was next to me. “My gosh, Dad,” she exclaimed. “I watched it all from the office window. It was so surreal! I didn’t know a bobcat could take down a coyote, but I saw it!”

  “If the coyote got the first bite,” I said, “it might have had a different ending. But the cat was too fast.”

  “I wonder if Trooper remembers that coyotes killed his family and almost killed him when he was a kitten? He got his revenge.”

  “A cat never kills for revenge, only for survival or to protect what he loves. Trooper used another one of his nine lives today.”

  “Dad,” she began with a concerned tone, “I was thinking. What will Trooper do now? I mean, he returned to the wild for a few minutes. Will he remain in a wild state, or will he be our loveable cat again?”

  “I really don’t know,” I confessed. “We can only wait and see which life he decides to live.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Introducing Brother to the Desert

  Neko kye gari. (A cat’s love is unconditional.)

  Japanese expression

  WE HAD A PEACEFUL NIGHT for the first time in over a year, with no coyote howls to haunt our dreams. Neighbors began to let their dogs and cats out after dark, without a worry about them disappearing in the jaws of coyotes. Children would be permitted to play in sandboxes and on backyard swing sets without worry.

  The first night following the battle, Trooper and Brother remained in my bed through the duration of the night, only venturing out come dawn. It seemed that the big cat was exhausted and Brother simply chose to stay with his hero.

  But Chi might have realized the true reason: Trooper wanted to show his devotion to us after his brief return to the wild during the battle. Nevertheless, we’ll never be sure why he changed his sleeping routine.

  Soon after, I tricked our fuzzy warrior and got him into his travel crate with little difficulty, as we went to visit Doctor Marg. I wanted her to examine him for wounds, though I didn’t really expect her to find any. And deep down, I felt the need to relate the battle story to someone outside the family.

  Teri was given the assignment of cat-sitting Brother and keeping him entertained in the office until we returned. The entire office was a wonderful playground for Brother, so I didn’t think she would have any problems.

  Doctor Marg listened quietly to my saga of cat versus coyote as she searched Trooper’s body for injuries. As usual, he remained still, enjoying her touch.

  “There is nothing wrong with your friend.” she announced happily. “Physically, he’s fine.”

  “What about mentally?”

  She laughed. “You’re the best judge of that. You two have been pals for a long time. If the fight bothers him, you’ll know it. But I doubt if it ever will. He did what was natural for him—kill an enemy, protect his friend. He may worry about your acceptance of his actions, but he doesn’t worry about social influences at all . . . not like we do after an accident or, say, a fight. Now, what did you start to tell me when you came in here? What did you call it? ‘A strange mental experience’?”

  “Well,” I hesitated. “I haven’t told anyone but my wife. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect to have you become a psychiatrist.”

  The doctor chuckled, and then I noticed her large shoulders were sloped forward and her short cropped dark hair was streaked with gray. The three of us had aged. I had not realized that fact before. She continued to lightly massage Trooper’s muscles.

  “You’re getting too old to be picking fights,” she suddenly said.

  “You talking to me or the cat?” I said.

  She turned and stared into my eyes.

  “Both of you,” she said, smiling slightly. “Go on with your report! Trooper survived the fight. Did you?”

  I looked down to the floor, contemplating just how to answer. Should I be honest, or avoid the question by pretending she was not really expecting a reply? “I actually felt . . . believed I had become a cat . . . for a few moments!” I finally said.

  “Go on . . .” she encouraged as she turned her attention to Trooper.

  “It never happened before, that feeling. I felt his movement, his thoughts . . .”

  “His thoughts? Interesting.”

  “Yes, interesting. But now that I think about it, it is frightening.”

  I paused, waiting for a response. None came, so I continued.

  “What I mean about his thoughts . . . I knew what he planned to do. How he planned his stalking, his attack. I could feel it, even though I couldn’t see him clearly.”

  “Why not?”

  “He . . . we, it seemed, were creeping up slowly from a gulley, moving between bushes. Then, I felt us leaping towards the coyote.”

  “Mr. Johnson,” she interrupted, “you and this cat have been close for what, thirteen years? That’s a very long time. It’s not unusual for two creatures who feel strongly for one another to believe, in some way, they are the same.”

  “Yes. I can agree with that.”

  “So, why not you and your cat? People often become totally, emotionally involved with a pet. In your mind, during the fight, you were giving the cat encouragement, helping him with the attack.”

  “That is what I’ve considered.”

  She switched tactics. “Do you watch football on TV?”

  “Very seldom,” I responded. “Not much time to sit that long, no matter how exciting it is.”

  “Well, you know many men do.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “My husband, for example, gets very involved during the Super Bowl. He, his brother, and a friend all jump from their chairs, knock things around, yelling and screaming at players thousands of miles away. My husband even cradles a football in his arms during the game. I think that he feels he is running with the real ball carrier, racing for a touchdown!”

  She laughed and waited for my response.

  It was dawning on me now. “I think I see the similarity.”

  “You have the answer, Mr. Johnson. Nothing should concern you about your experience. My husband loves football. When he watches it, he’s involved emotionally, and almost physically. You love this cat. What’s the difference?”

  I thought about her explanation as scenes from Trooper’s fight with the coyote flashed through my mind

  “Thanks, doctor,” I responded, though still not fully convinced my experience was identical to her husband’s.

  Trooper was unusually quiet during the drive back to the ranch. I wondered if, in his thoughts, he was reliving his battle as I had briefly done during the conversation with Doctor Marg. But I had learned something from the cat through my experience with him over the years. Of course, it was difficult to know with any certainty but I think he had a way of placing many events, especially troubling ones, from his mind and would continue on with new things he believed important. Life goes on, so to speak. Did he forget past events? I don’t think so. He simply avoided places, things, and people that made him uncomfortable, the same we humans do when we are thinking logically.

  As for me, I too had to clear my mind and move on to current projects.

  Once I opened the crate upon returning home, Trooper leaped out and bounded towards the office. That was his
first priority of the day. After assuring Chiaki he had suffered no damage from the fight, I walked out to get a report from our cat-sitter. It wasn’t what I expected. “Dad, that little cat is more trouble than a three-year-old in a china shop!” Then Teri added, pointing, “But he still is silly-cute. Look at all those things on the floor next to the book shelf.”

  She continued with her report, almost out of breath.

  “He jumped up on the shelf and knocked everything off. Then I scolded him and he came to the desk begging for attention. He’s quite a paradox! One minute full of mischief, the next begging for affection.”

  “Well,” I responded, “he’s sleeping in a chair in the meeting room now.”

  “Good! He wore himself out getting into trouble.”

  Indeed, the little cat was sleeping peacefully, joined by Trooper, who apparently was still stressed from his trip to the doctor.

  My attempts to discipline Brother had, in the past, also been unsuccessful. If I scolded him with a stern No! or a sharp Brother!, his feelings seemed crushed, and he pleaded to be cuddled and stroked. He would remain a very sensitive cat throughout the years which resulted in us giving him more freedom than necessary.

  Perhaps part of our reluctance to discipline him was because he often responded to the situation by being a clown. He had some strange desire to entertain through acrobatics and an unending series of fast movements that consisted of leaping high onto something and tumbling off in very un-catlike crashes.

  We simply concluded that Brother craved attention, and we usually succeeded in meeting his needs.

  Trooper, on the other hand, was far less tolerant of Brother’s demands. Perhaps, because of his age, he was a little cranky or just didn’t want to be bothered, so the big cat often smacked his mischievous friend—of course, with no claws extended. Brother would then rush to one of us with large sad eyes for consoling.

  “That is a very funny cat!” Herman announced while standing in the office doorway one afternoon.

  I joined him to see what had the man amused. In the front yard, under the shade of one of our tall cottonwood trees, Brother was busy digging a hole in the soft, sandy soil.

  Trooper sat a few feet away, appearing to supervise the project. Brother continued to dig to a depth of his chest. Only his head was visible.

  “What’s he doing, Herman?”

  “He’s digging toilet! That’s the way he always prepares his toilet. I’ve seen him do that before.”

  “Why so deep?” I said, puzzled. “Cats usually don’t dig that deep a hole.”

  Herman’s shoulders hunched. As clueless as I, he walked towards the guesthouse.

  Once again, Brother had caused a comical incident, though this one was probably intended to have been intended to be a little more private. As ridiculous as his deep toilet appeared, the project remained important to him for several weeks. Apparently, the refilling of the hole required extra energy even a young cat was unwilling to exert. He finally decided a much shallower hole would suffice.

  During Brother’s hole-digging Trooper sat back several yards away and simply observed the activity. I think that Trooper found Brother’s potty “training” amusing. A bobcat, in the wild, may bury his waste, or leave it exposed if he is marking his territory. We seldom saw Trooper in such a situation but when we did, the hole he dug was shallow. Over the next several months I noticed that Brother’s potty hole became shallower and eventually not deep at all. We never learned why the original hole was so deep, but the excavation seemed important to the little cat.

  “We have a serial killer, Dad,” Teri announced one morning with obvious disgust. “Trooper has a small, down-like feather on his whiskers!”

  “One feather doesn’t make my cat a serial killer.”

  “Yeah, but he had a similar feather on his whiskers yesterday!”

  “Maybe it was the same feather!”

  “Come on, Dad . . .”

  “I think he needs a good lawyer,” I joked. “You can’t convict a cat on circumstantial evidence.”

  Trooper had begun a sincere effort to teach Brother the art of hunting and stalking, beginning with a short run and a leaping attack.

  Brother attended those classes, conducted “in the field,” but I believe in his heart he was a pacifist. He never indicated even the slightest interest in killing anything. He was a loyal friend, however, and did accompany Trooper.

  I watched early one morning, shortly after sunrise, as Trooper moved slowly from the gulley on the desert side of our ranch and began to stalk something. Brother followed closely behind, mimicking his friend’s movements with little enthusiasm.

  Then I saw their prey: two desert tortoises. Each was about twelve inches in length. Their high-domed, dark brown shells appeared dusty in the morning sunlight. Apparently they had just emerged from their burrows where they would, no doubt, return once the heat of the day made life uncomfortable. In fact, more than 90 percent of the life of a desert tortoise is spent underground. They live in burrows from early October until sometime in April, depending on the warmth of the sun. If the young, when hatched, can survive predator attacks by hawks, ravens, coyotes, and bobcats, these plant-eating creatures can live over fifty years, some reach the age of eighty in the Mojave Desert. They obtain the water they require from the cacti and other plants they eat and store it under their shell to survive during hibernation periods.

  The tortoise is listed as a “threatened species” under the Endangered Species Act (1973), and in Las Vegas, they are also protected by the Bureau of Land Management.

  One of the stalked tortoises flipped the other over onto its back. I don’t know if they were fighting or playing, but I worried that the reptile would remain helpless, unable to return to a normal position. I learned later that they can often right themselves, but if not, of course, they die a slow death.

  There, helpless upon his back, his legs waving frantically, the poor reptile struggled as Trooper closed in.

  I prepared to rush through the gulley and rescue the tortoise when I noticed that the other tortoise had returned to his victim and flipped him back into an upright position. Was this an act of compassion? Had the stronger tortoise planned to teach the other a lesson?

  Meanwhile, I continued my race to prevent Trooper from attacking, but I was too late. He rushed at one, but stopped inches from the reptile. Then he reached out with his large paw and gently touched the shell. By now, the tortoise had safely retracted his head and legs.

  Trooper looked over his shoulder and sat down, waiting for Brother to join him. The cats sniffed the tortoise and then casually returned to the gulley.

  It seems that the big cat had no intention of actually killing the reptile. He was conducting a training exercise in the art of stalking and rush attack. In this advanced training, Brother must learn how to attack a fast-moving target, one that could possibly escape.

  Trooper had encountered a tortoise before. He knew they moved slowly, at least much more slowly than a jackrabbit, and would hide in their shell without fighting back. For the cat, the reptile was a great training tool. No harm would come to Brother, though the exercise must have been traumatic for the tortoise.

  The next day a true test awaited Brother, one which would require extreme stealth and speed. While watching this exercise, I realized that Trooper knew they were attempting the impossible: to capture an elusive bird.

  It was a good education for his young friend, with no plans to turn the prey into dinner. The impossible target selected was a raven.

  The southwest common raven is a highly intelligent, large black bird standing up to two feet tall, often weighing over four pounds. The bird has played a key part in the life of man for thousands of years, especially in ancient mythology, religion (the raven is mentioned in both the Bible and the Koran), music, and literature.

  Because of the raven’s glossy black plumage, deep croaking call, and diet of carrion, it was considered a bird of ill omen by some ancient cultures, w
hile others have thought it to be a powerful and helpful symbol. In Greek mythology, for example, the raven was a sign of good luck.

  Ravens had a very special place in Norse legend. Their chief god, Odin, owned two ravens which he named Huginn, or “thought” and Muninn, or “memory” (or mind). According to the myth, recorded over 1,200 years ago, the two ravens served as Odin’s eyes and ears and were given the ability to speak, at least to Odin. Each morning the birds flew about the world, returning in the evening to report to Odin what they saw and heard on their travels. (A curious aside: Odin worried that someday Muninn would become lost and never return.) In Viking lore, King Ragnar Lodbrok honored the raven with its image on his banner, carried on both his ship and into battle.

  In the Mojave Desert today, we have no buzzards or vultures to feed on carrion and, with the exception of the loss of coyotes and jackrabbits, very little roadkill. This doesn’t bother the raven. It will eat just about anything—insects, berries, or small animals—to survive. The raven often mimics the sounds in his environment, including human speech. They mate for life, the male demonstrating considerable devotion to his female. On the ground they run, hop, and move about in a strut-like walk, but in the sky they are beautiful flyers in spite of their large size, using wind currents to conserve energy as they bank and glide in graceful pairs. They are known to be aggressive and will attack predators if one nears their young, and can be very cunning, often dropping stones on their enemy in an attempt to injure or kill. But most of the time, unless threatened, they are curious, playful birds, always working in pairs.

  Trooper had attempted, unsuccessfully, to catch ravens over the years. With all his stealth ability, the ravens still detected his advance and escaped to the sky. While one bird fed and strutted about the ground, its mate remained high in a tree, telephone pole, or something similar, keeping a watchful eye for danger. On a signal, its mate took to the sky. Occasionally both birds would land in the same area, and Trooper often took advantage, with no luck, of those rare occurrences.