Bashir was sulking. Lying in the mottled shade of some African scrub, he replayed the events of his earlier unsuccessful hunt and the now detectable pangs of hunger did nothing to improve his mood.
His mother, a proud, elegant, tawny-yellow serval cat, richly marked with dark stripes down her spine and black spots decorating her sinuous flanks could trace her bloodline from the northern Nubia region where her ancestors walked the palaces of ancient Egyptian royalty. She named him Bashir, “the one who brings good news”, a name earned from a reputation as a hunter, even at the tender age of six months. However, the constant encroachment of the nearby human town and the unending drought had left his southern grassland kingdom devoid of the small prey he needed to sustain himself.
He stared sullenly towards the town, his ever-attentive ears picking up the sounds of the humans going about their day, while his sensitive nose detected the obnoxious odours of wood smoke, diesel, and well, humans!
Bashir’s forehead wrinkled in disgust as the wind turned and carried to him the stench of rotting food and garbage. It was a smell he had grown to know, and his state of mind was not helped by the fact that he was forced to forage in the town’s landfill to hunt its population of rats and mice. His tail swotted away a lone fly that buzzed annoyingly around his ear as he wondered what his mother would think if she could see what he had become, a beggar in his own land.
As the early autumn sun sank with a fireball of colour into the distant horizon, the cool of the evening descended. He waited until the multitude of black crows that circled the dump daily had gone to roost, and the darkness afforded him some protection, only then did he, disconsolately, saunter towards the humans’ discarded trash.
The next day, as the easterly horizon began to lighten, bringing with it the promise of warmth, Bashir awoke. He stretched cramped muscles and yawned widely, his tongue extended and curled backwards instinctively. Lying back, he suddenly sensed that something was different, without knowing exactly what. He sat to attention. Resting on his haunches, his front legs pressed together, perfectly straight, like gilded parallel supports, his paws between his thighs, his nose twitched as he tested the air. Bashir’s instincts told him things were not as they usually were. Besides a scrawny bitch with pendulous teats rummaging amongst the plastic and the decay, the distant landfill was expectedly quiet and desolate as it was far too early for the scavenging crows and the stinking, smoke belching trucks that endlessly dumped more and more human refuse onto the expanding pile.
His large ears scanned the cool morning air from horizon to horizon, but it was many minutes before he realised what was dissimilar. He checked again, yes, that was it, the humans were curiously quiet.
Gone was the noise of early traffic, the greetings and calls of humans. It happened periodically, but this time the quiet was different, heavier, almost oppressive. He turned dismissively and made his way further into the parched grassland to find shelter for the day.
As the heat of the day slowly made way for the moist chill of the evening and the damp from the early dew began to settle, Bashir made his way towards his filthy hunting grounds. This time, however, he did not stop at the tip, his curiosity drew him to the very edge of the town. He had seldom been this close, but he was intrigued to find out what these humans were up to, something was definitely amiss. He ventured to the first row of houses they all had curtains drawn and some with thin spires of smoke reaching straight up into the clear, windless night sky, he sensed a fear, a menacing threat. The sudden baying of a lone dog startled him, he turned and loped to the sanctuary of long brown grass and shrubs outside the town.
The next morning as the sun rose warm and bright in a percylite sky, Bashir was awake, his instinctive curiosity, heightened. The humans were behaving strangely out of character and he had to find out why, it could be his very existence was at threat because of it. Resolutely he made his way towards the town, determined to find the answers he sought.
As he approached the same row of houses he was at the night before, he was struck by stillness. He checked the position of the sun in the sky, usually, by this time the air was filled with the sounds of engines, children on their way to school, neighbours shouting greetings and the tooting of horns as husbands left for their respective days of labour. Today, there was none. Emboldened, he ventured further into town, walking passed shuttered houses and locked gates still wet with dew. The air was devoid of the fumes his sensitive nose hated so much, and he was puzzled.
Bashir came upon the first intersection, he had kept a watch from the outskirts of town to constantly assess the potential dangers these two legged invaders posed, but only a few times before had he dared penetrate this deeply into the town, the last occasion, one warm summer night, he was startled by a group of men sitting in the shadows, today the streets were deserted. The shops that he knew were always thronging with people now stood forlorn and a plastic bag moved dejectedly in the breeze down the empty street. For a while he thought they had all just left, packed up and gone, but then he saw two of them, off in the distance, walking abreast, but apart as though the one did not trust the other, and as they got closer he noticed they were wearing masks that hid their noses and mouths, but could not hide the anxiety in their eyes.
He edged further into the town and from the cover of a pavement shrub watched a group of 5 men gathering but acting strangely. There was no sign of the usual human greeting, the wrapping of arms or the touching of hands, but instead, like the two he had seen earlier, they were standing apart, even in the cool of the early morning and wearing the covers on their faces. They spoke in muted tones that carried uncertainty. Gone was the brashness and the confidence that an apex predator exudes but replaced by an unmistakeable fear.
He remembered stories his mother used to tell of how the humans had conquered the territories of his forefathers. How they had swept anything, indeed everything, aside that dared stand in their way. As a young kitten he sat, enthralled, when being told of how a human had stood, rock steady, to face the trumpeting charge of an enraged African bull elephant, and how, after merely emitting a deafening report and a puff of smoke, he had made the massive beast check in its charge and crash to the ground, not ten loping strides from where the unflinching man stood. No animal was able to do that, not even four or five lionesses hunting as one.
Bashir had seen how the humans had changed the course of rivers to flood vast plains and valleys so they could drink. He had seen how they could remove hills, within hours, that had stood for millennia to build their roads, seen how any threat, large or small, was simply obliterated. Surely there was nothing the humans feared.
As he made his way out of the deserted town, Bashir was worried. What was it that kept the humans confined to their homes and made them fearful of their fellow citizens? What calamity could be larger than an African elephant or more ferocious than a wounded buffalo? What could pose a bigger threat than a raging river, or a marching bushfire stretching for miles, driven on by winds that blew unhindered over the grasslands and more importantly, what did this mean for his own survival?
Later that night, as Bashir lay beneath a lucid moonless sky he resolved to put as much distance between himself and the town. He realised he was giving up a fruitful, but degrading hunting ground, but he also knew it was better to bank on his instincts and mother nature, as had his ancestors before him.
Whatever the humans were afraid of, they had brought it upon themselves and his life experienced had taught him he was better off without them.
He would rest now, and tomorrow he would leave.
