Once I met a man named Jim who flew planes and supported a small, private, big cat sanctuary on his property in Punta Gorda. Here I met Rick, a 17-year-old cougar, who could talk to me plain as any man. Plainer, in fact, than a man because Rick was a mountain lion and mountain lions have no use for talking other than to say the thing they mean to say. Maybe there are some men out there like mountain lions, but most of the men I know are just noises, like a radio someone doesn’t have the time to turn off. Jim, God bless him, is like a mountain lion.
I didn’t know about a cougar before Rick, so I had a steep learning curve about friendships with cougars. This curve requires quick study and comes up fast because mountain lions tolerate no nonsense at all. You’d better get with their program or you and your severed body part will be screeching into the ER. Prior to my time at Jim’s big cat sanctuary, I had cat allergies that would seize me up quicker than concrete. Rick had told me on the first day I met him I was supposed to pick his nits because he was too old to reach most of his coat anymore, and it was matting up like a jute rug. It itched and felt terrible, but when you’re already seven years past your natural life span there’s only so much you can expect from your previously Slinky-like spine. I had to groom him, and I had to do it without any allergies.
I set my mind to it, and, in time, Rick and I worked out a system so I could tug free his tatty dreads, small things about the size of a pencil nub, for hours on end without so much as my eyes watering. I’m telling you: if you don’t think somewhere back in time your ancestors weren’t dragging their knuckles and picking nits off each other, then sit for an afternoon working loose tiny chunks of matted cougar fur until that coat gleams in pristine smoothness. Grooming Rick put smiles on the faces of each kernel of my primate DNA. When I groomed him, I was doing some kind of ancient animal work, some agreement between species that required trust with abandon and zero foolishness. It was not play time. He had all his claws and teeth.
Rick only got mad at me one time. I’d gotten too complacent with him and did my work without thinking about what I was doing. My mind drifted to some faraway matter while I was plucking the dreads on his butt. He rolled quickly, looked me dead in the eye, and whapped the chain link right in front of my face with his saucepan-sized paw. He was geriatric at this point, but it would have knocked me on my ass if he’d made contact. It was a warning shot, and it sure did get my attention. I didn’t make that mistake twice.
Rick lived in a cage with two big rooms, a platform, toys, lots of greenery and the floor was the earth, not this concrete crap you find in zoos and other places that are even more terrible. Rick, a baby trafficked in the pet trade, found his way to Jim’s sanctuary through other humans who rescued animals. Rick was one of many cougars Jim raised and stood caretaker for, though Jim will tell you right now that seeing an animal like that locked up is a hell of a thing to live with, even if you love them and do the best you can for them in the circumstances. Captivity is no kind of life for creatures born with wild, roaming natures and minds prone to intricate calculations of speed, distance, height, and force. Hell, captivity is no kind of life for any kind of creature, and I mean that for humans, too, caged up as we are in our computer worlds and our madness. We’re batshit insane as a species, clanging our little cups on the bars of our rooms on the loony ward we built for ourselves.
Rick died later that year, the last of the mountain lions who found refuge in Jim’s sanctuary.
Whether he knew it or not, Rick taught me many profound, personal lessons, but the greatest one was to cross the bridge between him and me, to trust the language of animals. I didn’t even have to be wide open, all I needed was to be a little open, open enough for him to see inside my heart. He read me, like cats do. That’s all. Clear, I imagine him thinking, and nothing more. When I touched him the first time, when I buried my fingers into his fur, tacky with cat oil and dirt, I was terrified—not that he would hurt me, but of the power of my own feelings that surged from somewhere in the air then up through me and crackled at the point where my skin met his. It was like all my life I had been waiting for a moment such as that.
Rick was all the proof I needed of the mystery, of how enthusiastic the mystery is for us to participate in it.
Here’s a poem from the Sufi poet Hafiz that a friend sent me during my time with Rick. I figure I’ll share it with you now, for you may, like me, need to remember to get off the loony ward and go love something real.
That camel your soul rented from a barn,
you might as well get on good terms with it,
seeing you are out in the wilderness, traveling.
Sometimes, I become my own pulse . . . enter
that world inside. There I have stayed a night
marveling at the firmament. Yes, inside any
living thing are stars.
All that the eye sees is just practice for
perfecting . . . the inner vision.
I can’t speak anymore of poverty of heart or
purse. For wherever I now stand, a gold mine
appears.
How did things change for me so much for
the better? I held God to His word when He
said, Seek and you will . . .
You say that last word for me. You must
know that famous phrase. Believe it, dear,
for it is so very true.
Marlowe Moore grew up in a small town in eastern North Carolina where she observed some of the greatest storytellers never known in her big Southern family. She studied creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill and earned her Master's in English/Creative Writing at Eastern Kentucky University. She loves animals, being outdoors and hanging in Gulfport where she lives with her now small family of cats, one dog, a ball python and a pretty spectacular husband. Her book, Rise of the Freaky Deaks, can be found on the cheap on Kindle.
