SOMEONE STOLE OUR LYNX

AGE – 5

 As usual, my mother was on another predator mission, it was on a farm somewhere in Africa.  What she had to do was inspect the predators, and their habitats.  During that mission, she came across the dead body of a mother Lynx. 

She was busy inspecting the body when she heard some noises in a nearby bush.  My mother soon discovered two tiny Lynx kittens.  And if she did not take the kittens then they would surely starve or be eaten by Hyenas.  We took them into our house as our own.  They were very young and had to be fed milk for a few months.  So we grew up with these lynx.  It was a male and female, and they later had kittens of their own. 

Around my mother, my sister and myself, the cats were very pleasant but the male Lynx was a bit aggressive with adult men.  Men were not allowed to sneeze or make any sudden movements in the presence of the male.  I suppose Lynx thought a human’s sneeze is an act of aggression.  When my sister or I sneezed, then the cats just looked at us and then looked away. The female used to sleep on my bed, and when she wanted to go off into the mountains she would bring her kittens for me to play with and then leave me to “babysit”.  Once we had two classes from the pre-primary school visiting our plot of land.   My mom waited for the female to leave with her kittens before she let the children come to visit.   But the cat soon brought her kittens back and they joined the fun – even eating cake with the kids. When they were relaxed and they purred, their feet would relax and you could see their long curved nails.  Lynx are not as dangerous as African Leopards or American Mountain Lions but they were surely powerful enough.  After the female had kittens, she chased away all the wild cats in the vicinity.  Well, they were wild house cats, and the ones who always pestered our birds. 

I felt bad for the wild house cats but this was the Lynx territory and they were not welcome anymore.  Strangely she had no problem with the Great Danes. When we went walking the dogs and cats would sometimes both walk together. The Lynx would run ahead and ambush the dogs.  When they approached she would jump out – give them a BIG fright and then playfully run ahead again.  

 There was one night we saw traces of blood on the male and female Lynx and the next day we got a phone call from the neighboring plot of land.  Our Lynx were blamed for fighting with their rottweiler guard dogs.  I suppose it could have been our cats, but what were we going to do? Punish the cats? How?  And that just won’t work.  If it was them, it was their instinct.  It seemed hardly likely that they would jump a fence to fight with 2 rottweilers.  Cats are more intelligent, and they can climb trees.  But the fact that the female was aggressive to other cats, made us wonder.  We couldn’t deny that they might have been responsible.  And definitely, they were capable of, attacking any surrounding dogs that impose threats to their kittens.  In the end it could even have been a leopard or a lion that attacked the neighbor’s Rottweiler’s we would never know. 

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