The big cat sat on a branch, licking herself clean. She purred in contentment, tasting the fresh blood of a rabbit from paws and muzzle. She cleaned herself carefully. The smell of blood was a sure warning to other meals, still on the hoof or crouching cautiously in their burrows. While she groomed her thick tawny fur, she was ever-alert, ever-listening, smelling the wood-smoke and other flavours on the wind. She curled her paw around and cleaned between each toe with her raspy, almost prehensile tongue. She did the other side, then each hind foot, with no hint of her precarious perch.
Her balance and flexibility were miracles of creation.
The killing was easy in these parts, and while the big cat was unaware of the fine geographic distinctions, she had unwittingly moved back into her natural range. She was home, and didn’t even know it. The killing was easy so the living was easy, and now the big cat had no natural enemies. No other top-of-the-food-chain predators competing directly with her; nor preying upon her. No other predators to spook the herd, spoiling a perfect set-up at the last instant, to cross ahead of the herd when the wind was wrong, or to leave a scent by a water source, and make them move on to another.
She had the herd all to herself.
She was familiar with the black bears, who were a hereditary enemy, and sparks flew when they met. Yet she hadn’t smelled any in so long, she knew they were absent. She didn’t waste a lot of time contemplating this. She merely accepted it, and it was good.
While the barking of nervous dogs was often in the air, there were no wolves, and no sign of their past presence. No hint of a pack in the vicinity. No wolverines, no badgers, although their smaller cousins, and pretty good eating when happenstance allowed, such as the groundhog, the raccoon and the possum were in abundance. No moose, the only creature besides one other which truly frightened the big cat. There were plenty of the two-legged noisy ones. She felt a kind of caution, a kind of disdain for them, for they didn’t behave properly. They seemed quite mad in their mindless pursuits; mysterious, and unknowable. She had never eaten one. Never even been tempted. They smelled bad, looked odd, and since she had never tasted the meat, she couldn’t offer an opinion. She had never really developed a hankering to try it.
The deer that were her favourite meal were big, fat and plentiful, and showed signs of complacency; although lately, they were more skittish. She knew nothing of hunting seasons, but they did and they knew, at least the adults, what time of year it was. It was the time of the rut, when the sound of antlers rattling against other antlers would tell her where to go. Tufts of hair would show where they rubbed against the trees, removing unwanted, scruffy last-season fur; to make way for the glossy new coat of autumn.
Their sweet-smelling tracks were scattered in profusion by the water hole, where almost any morning, she could lie in wait and make a try for one. But now it was time to curl up and go to sleep, with her hindquarters rubbing reassuringly against the tree. She put her head on her paws, and relaxed with her tail curled around her like an expensive stole; on the upwind side to keep the chill away from her toes.
A splishing and splashing came from the bowl of the valley nearby, where the creek curled around upon itself, and ran slow and deep. There was nothing in particular there that she liked to eat, and nothing in particular there that she feared. She put her head down and slept, mind you; always with one ear open. One ear tracked the sound as it made its way down the flowing river. Finally, even that movement ceased, and after a while, so did the purring. Her breath was soft, deep and even.
Pale, frosty light glistened on the bark of oak branches around her perch, high above the blackened woods, all a-shiver with uncertain breezes, coming and going as was their wont.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mayor Hope Pedlar…