The Purr Of The Jaguar Kitten

It took an amazing number of eyedroppers to fill my infant jaguar cub, but at last, round eyes drooping with repletion, he pushed my hand away and I laid him down on the jacket. He looked around, yawned, stretched, purred for a second, and then dropped his head between those sheltering soft paws. He was asleep. That same afternoon Pedro and I built a kind of rough stockade beneath the giant ceiba tree near our lean-to. Driving stakes well into the ground and close together, we wove tough vines in and out to give the whole thing strength. That was where my jaguar was to spend his first night. As a matter of fact he did nothing of the kind. For he must have dedded that, although obviously unsatisfactory from many standpoints, I was the nearest thing to mother that he could find around camp, and he was not to be separated from me that first night.

So from dark until bedtime he snarled and cried and bit at his prison walls, and as soon as I went inside the lean to he raised a lamentation to high heaven that made even the howling monkeys down by the lagoon pause in envy. The fire died, but the serenade went on, gaining in volume. Sleep seemed very far away. At last Pedro's patient voice sounded at the entrance. "Is it the senor's thought that I let this ungracious beast go and bring us peace?" I replied a little acidly that nothing could be further from the senor's thoughts, and, feeling around for my moccasins, went out into the moonlight.

Dark and mysterious, the jungle loomed like an impenetrable wall about me, and I had that feeling of being spied on by a thousand unseen eyes. Into the little stockade moonlight filtered from among the ceiba branches, and I could see small teeth glisten as my kitten tore the tough wood. For a while he worked in savage silence, then with all his tiny might he struck with both paws at the stakes, and once again threw back his head to fill the night with lamentation. But suddenly he had seen me, and with a glad little cry stood up on his hind feet, begging to be lifted out. What could one do?

I raised him in my arms and walked back to bed. The rough, wet, red tongue licked my neck and a vigorous purr began to vibrate through him. Praying that Pedro wouldn't see me, I pulled the blanket over both of us, and there, head tucked beneath my chin, the jaguar spent a perfect night. For me it wasn't quite so perfect. Twice he dreamed, and his needle-like claws pricked me. Then, too, he had a way of purring that seemed to fill the whole lean-to. It was a kind of double action purr, working on both the intake and exhaust, and before morning I began to entertain doubts as to my entire wisdom in adopting this jungle orphan.