Yareen made her way down a jagged escarpment on the Sierra Madre plateau, not far from Luis Munõz’s boyhood home. Her ebony and tan flanks rippled through the pale green of manzanita and scrub oak. Falling pebbles, pushed from their earthen beds by her great paws, scattered noisily down the slope ahead of her.
Her mate was roused from an afternoon nap in a tree above her. They greeted each other with low, rolling hellos as she bounded up the tree. Yareen rubbed her head against her mate’s with her golden eyes wide open. They had been together for many sunrises and sunsets. Soon, he would leave her and she would return to a solitary life to birth their cubs. It would be her second time.
They climbed down the tree and followed a path to a big, rock-lined bowl in the stream for a swim. She caught a trout and they shared it. Later they lingered by the water’s edge, where a nearby deer stood immobilized in the brush, caught unawares by their silent arrival. Its breath was barely discernable until the large cats moved away, saved by being upwind of its natural predator.
Earth changes were indeed affecting the sky islands of the jaguars’ home, but this spring it had brought more frequent rain. The streams ran full and cold, and the oak woodlands were a riot of activity as the oaks produced an abundance of acorns on which a host of creatures feasted.
For Yareen, it meant easy access to plumb deer, and plenty of milk for her young cubs when three months later she gave birth to four kittens.
Among them was a large, white cub who startled his mother each time she looked at him. Following her natural instincts, she gave Duma little access to her teats until the cubs she saw as normal had suckled, and often, there was little nourishment left for the largest baby.
And so the white cub weaned earlier than the others and began foraging to survive. Oblivious to his difference, Duma frolicked in the woods that first season of his life, reveling in the joy of being alive on a great, good planet.
Soon, he learned to imitate their mother’s low whistle and practiced the hissing scream that immobilized trembling quarry, though with his were more a yip and a squeak. The furry ball loped over rocky terrain, following Yareen and his siblings at a distance through the scrubby wooded forests, pouncing on the prey his mother wrestled to the ground in a fury of claws and fangs.
Duma’s markings afforded him little camouflage in a region of emerald, umber, and black. Unknowingly, the young cat developed stealth and discernment beyond even the ability of his kind. He would have to be faster, stronger, and develop cunning beyond that of his siblings and mother to survive.
With clear, blue eyes rimmed in red and a ghostly white pelt with telltale rosettes, the pale cat later earned the name “ghost cat.” And so it happened that as the jaguar went about the business of eating, sleeping, and traveling sightings of Duma would spark many colorful legends among the two-leggeds of his time.
Susan Feathers 