CAT TRACKS (An epic of Feline Survival) by AALBORG GORDON

Author:AALBORG, GORDON
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-11T04:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

As the young tomcat moved into his second year of growth, his budding sexual maturity forced upon him an increased need to wander from the home territory he had maintained since kittenhood. Gradually, he began to work his way farther and farther downstream, following the eastern shore where the waters of the river broadened into the beginning of the Cotter reservoir.

He was now a large cat; though still not fully grown, he weighed in at nearly a dozen pounds and every ounce of it was solid bone and strong, flexible muscle. He was in prime condition, having mastered his survival lessons and learned as much as his mother could have taught him. Seldom, now, did he miss his prey once his careful, feline stalk had begun. He slaughtered nesting birds both on the ground and in the trees, slew young possums and sugar-gliders with consummate skill and ease, and varied his diet at will on marsupial mice, small rodents, and lizards.

Surprised on his kill one morning by a small dog, a terrier crossbreed that wasn't much bigger than the cat, his instincts to run were over-shadowed by another instinct...that of defending his kill.

The cat backed away at first, placing the carcass of the lyrebird between them. Then he half-faced the cautious intruder and raised the fur on his neck and shoulders in an instinctive attempt to make himself look larger than he really was.

Ears flattened against his skull, his ruff and tail fluffed out as far as they would go, the cat began a series of rocking motions, taking his weight first upon one forefoot and then the other. As the starving dog moved closer, the cat began to growl and gnash his teeth, saliva dripping from his fangs as he worked himself up into a frenzy of rage.

For the small dog it was all quite confusing. He was only about a year old, and his experiences with cats during that first year had led him to believe that they would always run from him. Besides, he was drooling with insatiable hunger, not having fed in more than three days.

The terrier was another victim of human callousness. Taken as a free puppy because his crossbreeding made him valueless, he'd been well enough cared for in a Canberra home until his approaching maturity made him assert his own personality and authority. It is something all male dogs do, but his indifferent owner didn't know that, or didn't care. Faced with a dog that, in his mind, had dared to growl at him and was therefore vicious, the owner simply decided it was somehow the dog's fault. So he drove out along the road to Brindabella one night and dumped the dog into the ditch. Dogs were wild animals by nature, the man thought, never realizing the young terrier's chances of survival were so slight as to be negligible.

The dog had starved for the first few days, then managed to capture a small frog and then a slightly larger lizard. When it met the tomcat, all thoughts of caution were driven from it by simple hunger.

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