It happened in the teenage years. Memory is unreliable here and allows the mystery to haunt more effectively.
It was autumn, a warm day after most of the leaves had browned. With so many fallen there is little chance of sneaking up on anything offtrail on these days; not that this was relevant to a teenager lost in his internal dilemmas.
There — it ran. Something brown, low to the ground. Silently it passed between the trees and vanished. It was not a deer, or at least it didn’t seem so — no flash of white, no bounding. Perhaps a coyote or some other wild dog? Or could it possibly be that other thing? You know the cat of which I speak.
This cat was extinct in the state according to the Game and Fish Commission at the time. Locals have always claimed otherwise, but this is not necessarily scientific. Current official dogma is more nuanced.
Years later — a hotel room in Rochester — cable TV — a cheetah sprints after a gazelle. Watching its form, the first thought that runs down my attention is that fall day and the blur running east, scarcely there.