If I have a totem animal it is the leopard, the loner at the horrific banquet of low-tech life. So while I might praise Kamla Negi for whacking an Indian leopard with her spade, I can’t help but root for the underdogs, who are outgunned and outnumbered by humans something like 5 million to 1.

As I discussed in the Roots of Horror [see the 40,000 Years from Home tag] I believe that the solitary big prowling cat in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas [in the form of the jaguar and cougar—okay, we can include me ex-boss too] is the actual nocturnal threat upon which the vampire mythology so popular today is based. To a large extent archaeologists and paleoanthropologists labor in the shadow and the debt of prehistoric leopards who are responsible for preserving the fossils of many early hominids by dragging them off to their secret lairs.

Check out this story before you get drunk in Bombay and decide to stagger back to the hotel.

I have my own predatory cat story from my demented youth. I was essential the Tarzan of our county, spending all summer in nothing but cutoff jeans and hunting for feral canines and cats with my spear in the woods. The following incident is a story that my sister often tells. I was inside punching the heavy bag in the basement level of our ranch house which was cut unto a hill. The back of the house faced an extensive wood.

My friend Donnie was playing horse shoes in the yard when a large—perhaps 20 pound—feral cat began traversing the yard from the woods on its way to the woods on the other side of the hill. This thing mistook Donnie’s game for an attempt to throw something at it and attacked him. My sister screamed for me and I came running outside hoping for a man to wage primal battle with, and was instead confronted with a small demon cat ripping into Donnie as he staggered toward us. I roared and charged, trying for all I was worth to run down the cat and bite its face off.

According to my sister, “You were never going to catch that cat. I have never seen an animal more terrified of anything in my life—and did not realize how fast a cat could run until then. You were like some naked rabid ape.”