Robert Adams - Horseclans 18 by The Clan of the Cats

Author:The Clan of the Cats
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-05T16:42:48+00:00

There were two other cats, both females. In order to obtain the initial pair of snow leopards, Bedford had had no option but to buy the two ringers — which the dealer had apparently been unable to unload on anyone else — which were derived of a bankruptcy sale that had marked the end of some underfunded European project. He was not sure just what to call them. The dealer had claimed that they were spotted lions, and they did bear a fleeting resemblance to leonine shape, but they were neither of them any larger than the white jaguar, lacked both the bony spur and characteristic tuft on the end of the tail and had upper cuspids as long in proportion to their heads and jaws as snow leopards. Although they were about two years old — to judge from their overall physical and sexual development — their reddish-tawny coats were speckled thickly on the back and sides with darker spots, with a few more lighter and less distinct ones even extending down the legs and onto the tail. Whatever they were, they were gentle, obviously used to the presence of humans and cooperative.

Bedford had, on the journey back with the four cats which would join the one female snow leopard already arrived, been very worried about the reception of the two strange felines. But he found he need not have so fretted, for Singh, Stekowski, Ruth Marberg and Zepur Baronian had all been ecstatic over the chance acquisition.

In the staff meeting later on the day he and the four cats had arrived back, Singh had explained their exceeding joy to him. “James, you are of course familiar with the recent success and the patenting of the Panthera spelaea replications by the Greek-Yugoslavian group? Well, what you may not know is that their efforts, though eminently successful, of course, were not truly original. No, there was a somewhat earlier project aimed at the selfsame replication: Panthera spelaea.

“That project was backed by an Italian investment group, and it overreached itself along many financial fronts. When there was no more money, almost all of the project’s physical assets and records were brought up by the hurriedly formed Greek-Yugoslavian group; they even hired on some of the original group’s personnel. All of this took place about eighteen months ago, and just how, at that time, two little cubs of no more than four or six months of age went astray and into the hands of this animal dealer, I cannot at all begin to imagine. If only he had known, he could have set almost any price for them and received it, too, had it gladly paid to him by the then-ongoing project in the Balkans.

“Awaiting only more detailed examination, we all here are firmly convinced that those two specimens are, can be nothing but, replications or reproduced examples of the Panthera spelaea — a spotted lion, somewhat smaller than the average of our extant lions, generally adapted to colder weather, denning in

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