Forest Cats of North America [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION BEAUTY AND THE BEAST But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked hy himself, and all places were alike to him. —Rudyaed Kipling, Just So Stories Rudyard Kipling's tale of "The Cat That Walked by Himself" hints at why we have admired and even worshiped the cat for 4,000 years. It is, first of all, a lovely animal. It lives everywhere, yet Ughtly, as if half not belonging. Flattering ourselves, we identify with its grace, its independence and its incorruptibly wild nature. We look at it and see the beauty and the beast within ourselves. Cougars, bobcats and lynx take their cathood even further than most of the world's 37 fehne species.They are not only beautiful; they are not only incorruptible; they are ghosts. Every year, I spend at least two months traveling the North American wilderness. I've seen plenty of wolves and bears. I've even seen a wolverine. But I've never seen a wild cat. 1 have no doubt, however, that they have seen me. Overseas, big cats are much less elusive. In Botswana's Okavango Delta, 1 have seen hon cubs biting their mother's ears, a leopard vaulting into a tree and a cheetah scanning the scrub mopane forest from its termite-mound lookout. In Russia's Far East, I've walked in tiger tracks; and in Nepal's Chitwan National Park, I narrowly missed being one of the many visitors to see a tiger in the wild. Yet in North America, some people spend their entire lives in the Cougars need huge amounts of space, especially since agriculture and settlement claimed our most fertile valleys decades ago, forcing the cats to survive mainly in deserts and mountain fastnesses.