Extract from "Snowena"

She misses. I bite my tongue so she won’t hear my curse except as a faint whisper on the snow-heavy wind. She’s accepted the hide I film from, but she’s not eaten since yesterday morning. And I didn’t realise how much I was willing her on to a successful hunt this time.

She licks her paw, disdainfully, as if to distance herself from her failure, as a domestic cat might. I watch her. Gorgeous snowy-grey thick fur with clear black markings that blend in with the mountainside, the fur-padded, clumsy-looking paws somehow graceful when she runs, the long, long tail, balance-keeper as she hunts over ragged rocks.

I’ll have to return to camp soon, but while she’s still here I can film. It took six months to find her. I don’t want to lose her now.

She has a cave further up. It’s tempting to kill a mountain goat and leave it for her but that would do more harm than good. She needs to hunt. Each failure is practice. Each failure a chance to try again. Each success buys a few more days of precarious life up here in the Hindu Kush. Evolution made her a specialist, otherwise the mountains would have become over-run with goats devastating the little vegetation that grows and turning this rocky outcrop into an inhospitable wilderness.
Amazingly people choose to live here too. Goat herders mostly who stick with the only life they’ve known for generations instead of seeking an easier, but unfamiliar life in the city. I guess we’re all creatures of habit.

I couldn’t do it. Those shacks made from timber, mud and thatch are precariously balanced on the mountainsides and always look as if they are about to collapse. At least I know my tent’s temporary. How those guys actually live here... I watch them too. The women are up first, sweeping out, watering and feeding the domestic animals and getting water for the day. Breakfast is made and eaten, then the herders, wrapped in layers and hats, move their goats out onto the pastures, moving up and down the mountain with the seasons. They’ve seen a lot too. This area’s been fought over by the Taliban and Northern Alliance and has been used as routes to distribute opium. No wonder the villagers always look fearful, as if death might tap them on the shoulder at any moment.

There was a kafuffle this morning. One of the domestic goats had been attacked and coats of others clawed at by some wild animal. The villagers blame the snow leopard they know we’re trying to film. I don’t think it’s her though, but don’t have the language to tell them or explain. But they need to know what is terrorising their animals so will name the snow leopard because they know she’s there.

Further reading in “Gentle Footprints.”

About the Writer Emma Lee

I’m Emma Lee, a published poet, short story writer, novelist, reviewer, blogger and competition judge. My poetry collection, “Yellow Torchlight the Blues” is available from Original Plus. My story “First and Last and Always” was included in “Extended Play” from Elastic Press, “Fifteen” was runner-up in the Leicester and Leicester Libraries short stories competition and published on the BBC Radio Leicester Website, “Restoration” was runner-up in the Writing Magazine’s ghost story competition and “Imprints” was highly commended in a Roadworks magazine story competition. I read my story “Lizzie’s Baby” at Short Fuse at the Y Theatre in Leicester (see photo above) and the story was also published in “Sein and Werden”. I’ve read my poems at diverse venues including Leicester City Football Club, Leicester’s Guildhall and at the Polyverse Festival at Loughborough University.

I’ve pretty much always been writing. Even before I could actually write, I used to create Lego houses, imagine who’d live there and create stories for them and their neighbours, essentially mini soap operas. My very first publication was with a story in the school magazine when I was aged 5.

Around the same time my love for cats developed. Our neighbours bought home a ball of grey fluff which would hide under the kitchen table and mew. She grew into an efficient hunter who didn’t take any nonsense from other neighbourhood cats. She also racked up an impressive 18 years.

I live in Leicestershire, not a county associated with big cats – Leicester Tigers rugby club has no direct link with the big cat – but foxes – Leicester City football club’s mascot is Filbert Fox, so named because the club’s former ground was at Filbert Street. There have been unconfirmed reports of a big black cat, possibly a panther, lurking around Aylestone Meadows, but no one’s uncovered any conclusive evidence yet. However, Leicestershire is birthplace to wildlife broadcaster David Attenborough and a jaguar was briefly in residence at Bosworth Hall, which was home to Lady Florence Dixie, a Victorian animal rights campaigner. The Dixie family founded the Dixie Grammar School in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire. The school calls its newsletter “The Snow Leopard” and has a snow leopard as their school’s badge because a snow leopard is featured in the Dixie family crest.

Snowena

My story is called “Snowena” which is the name given to the snow leopard by a girl called Rihanna who loves watching wildlife documentaries and getting as many facts about big cats as she can. When she grows up she wants to be a wildlife vet, preferably working in a wildlife sanctuary. Ideally all wild animals would be able to live in their natural habitat but for some that’s not possible.

She struggles over choosing a name because she believes she can’t think up a good enough one. She rejects her own name Rihanna, rejects her friend’s name, Ciara, because it’s Italian and the snow leopard’s not Italian, but doesn’t know any names from the snow leopard’s home. Rihanna’s going to ask her mum to adopt a snow leopard for her on her birthday.

After much thinking she settles on Snowena as a name.

Later Rihanna has to do a show and tell at school and wishes she had a laptop so she could simply show everyone the documentary about Snowena. Instead she does her show and tell about a panther as she has a toy panther called Ebony. Panthers are leopards with a condition, melanism, which turns the underlying fur black so they appear to have completely black fur. Jaguars can also develop melanism.