Rodents and Cats

Posted on August 25, 2002 in Zoos

(I’m getting around to telling the stories of last Thursday.)

Molly, the younger of the two girls that Lynn’s friend Jodie brought with her to the zoo on Thursday, has been raising rats for ten years. I loved showing her the various forms that rats assumed after the Panamanian land bridge linked South America to North America and they scurried across to dine on the eggs of several forms of giant, flightless birds which are now extinct: the agouti, the mara, and the capybara were the most notable among them. Such a fascinating story I find every time I think about what evolution has wrought in this world. (And how much more forgiving it is than this reputed sky god who gives us sexual organs that can be stimulated in many different ways, but says we sin if we do not stick to the one.) I think it was one of the few times when Molly and I connected, mostly in silence, as we watched the mara squat like a cat, the agouti run about like an undersized deer, and the capybaras plop listlessly next to the tapirs.

Jodie wanted to see the cats. So we took her to the cages that stand behind the Elephant House. I don’t know that she looked much at them: she and Lynn talked old times at Stanford while I led the crowd to the various attractions. Her husband, John, seemed the most interested in the animals after Molly and myself. He read most of the signs. Hillary enjoyed eavesdropping on the tales of her mother’s savage college days.

The small cats — biting cats is how the signs said they are classed — either slept in plain sight or hid or galloped about their brushy enclosures. I stopped at the Siberian Pallas Cat, a domestic-sized beast which would steal the heart of any cat fancier with its flat face, thick whiskers, and short, broad ears. The Pallas cat romped about its cage and stopped to watch those who passed it on the way to the red duikers and rhinos. When I mewed at it, it stared at me. Kindred? we asked one another in the secret language of the searching eyes. At least in our appreciation of the purpose of zoos, I think, which is to watch the antics of those enclosed and of those free to wander.