The Wild Cat Book

When we returned from a long trip to India, our then-four-year-old daughter was greatly relieved to be back home. As we walked into the house, she flung herself on her favorite cat and exclaimed, “I need to touch a purr!” If you have ever lived with a cat, you know exactly what she meant. Soft and caressable, house cats are comforting companions in the purring body of a wild beast. Their lithe, light-footed movements remind us that they are just a whisker away from their wild relatives, and their do-as-they-like attitudes make us want to woo them. We feel honored when they respond, perhaps because we sense they are by nature solitary creatures that have become social with us. In wild cats we see the beauty of our house cats writ large. For thousands of years, our ancestors and wild cats lived in daily contact. Stealthy, powerful, and intelligent, cats shadowed early human hunters, competing with them for prey. In turn, we scavenged their kills but lived in fear of their covert stalk and deadly canine teeth. We made them our totems and respected them as symbols of strength, courage, and royalty. Today the image of the crouched tiger or leopard is etched in our consciousness as a symbol of power and of wild places. Keen and intensely familiar, we know the voice, recognize the silhouette. In dark places it stirs a dimly remembered feeling and makes us catch our breath in awe. This admiration, respect, and fear are part of our collective ancestral memory.