Day Three Lyn Fountain

The Last Big Cat is the story of a black panther struggling to survive an exceptional drought, after living wild in the Norfolk countryside a year after being released from a travelling circus. Driven by thirst, the cat is drawn back by familiar sights and sounds when the circus returns. The animal trainer-turned-clown, George, puts out water, unthinkingly luring the cat out from the woods and into the gun sights of Jackson, a man obsessed with killing the big cat.

EXTRACT

“Curling his lip and wrinkling his nose to taste the air, the big cat lifted his angular head to the sky. Some of the migratory pink-footed geese, who’d arrived to find their usual over-wintering freshwater lakes bone dry, were taking to the air again to try further inland. Small confused squadrons of unfamiliar individuals, splitting and reforming, attempting to forge a cohesive unit, passed over the big cat’s head. His eyes, coal black pin-prick pupils within glowing emeralds, followed the birds’ chaotic progress and lingered on the spot where they dissolved into the amber arc on the south-eastern horizon. oAs silently as the falling leaves, as the rising of the sun and the lifting of the night, the big cat turned around and dissolved back into the woods.
In the village, a man called Jackson was standing at an upstairs window, his binoculars trained on the landscape. Like a bird honing in on its prey, his line of vision travelled along the temporary perimeter fence erected to guard the travelling circus, up the pale gradient of the dry field, its ridges now baked hard into the landscape, and to the abrupt edge of Middle Wood. The faintest of movements held his attention. The barest shifting of a shape, black against black.
“You’re there,” he murmured intensely. “I know you’re there all right.”



Tomorrow, I’ll be looking at some black panther details.