Here's lookin' at you lookin' at me, 4

This is... not quite a leopard, nor a cheetah nor serval. This is a dead cat.

It was not always dead. I met it running around for three, maybe four years at longest around 2020 as a stray, sometimes waiting expectantly for scraps (which some locals unthinkingly provided in far too ample amounts, stinking up the neighbourhood when they rotted) but mostly I assume it chased rodents and birds. We never spoke. I don't know what it thought of the changing texture of pinions or the lyrical quality of squeaks. I never asked its carnivorous opinion on the death penalty. It was calm around humans but coyly evasive at their approach. Then one chilly morning it lay stretched motionless on the damp lawn next to the parking lot, rotting, jaws gaped in rigor mortis, no apparent trauma. Maybe poisoned, more likely just a brief lifetime of diseased, weatherbeaten, hardscrabble subsistence in a world alien to it both as wild hunter or civilized pet.

 

The End