“Are you still here?” I yelled silently over the din of four lanes of rush hour traffic.

He said he was, and that panicked me even more.  Traffic was so fast and thick that I couldn’t get to him.  If there was a break in it at all, I was going to have to run.  If he really was still here, he wasn’t going to let me just pick him up, but I couldn’t carry the bag, the blanket and a net, AND run, so I opted to leave the net.  In between cars I could see his fur moving.  I just couldn’t tell if he was breathing or if it was the rush of air from the passing cars.

 

Finally a gap large enough for me to race to him.  He looked so perfect, just a bit of blood at his nose and mouth.  His fur fluttered, and I asked again, “Are you here?”  Again, he insisted he was, but he sounded confused.  Just to be sure, I threw the thin blanket over him as I scooped his body to mine.  If he did wake up, at least there was a bit of cloth between us, and I had a good enough grip that I felt I could wrestle him to the truck...but as soon as I touched him, I knew he wasn’t “still here”... not in the sense that he thought he was any way.  Rigor mortis had set in.

 

I want to make sure this bobcat is the only casualty here today, so I roll him over on his back and check his stomach for signs of nursing.  At this time, I don’t know he’s a male and he’s quite fat, but not smelly, so I’m wondering if this is a pregnant female or a nursing mom, but there’s no sign of that.  Spirits don’t seem to have gender.

 

The median we were in was only a few feet across, so cars and trucks were whizzing past.  There was more blood than I first had seen, once I pulled him close.  I tried to be as respectful as possible whilst getting him into the plastic bag.  People were yelling as they drove by, “Is that a black panther?” and “Is that a jaguar?”  I ignored them and told the lifeless body that I’d take his old suit to Big Cat Rescue so that look-y-loos weren’t gawking at him anymore.

 

Finding a break in traffic to get him back to the van wasn’t quite as long, or maybe it just seemed shorter, since I knew now there wasn’t a life to be saved.   One of the ignoramuses, who had yelled out the window saying, “That’s a jaguar, isn’t it?” was making a U turn to come up behind my parked truck.  I put the wrapped body into a carrier and closed the door, just as the first guy comes up, camera in hand, asking if he can take a picture with the jaguar.  His half wit companion is yelling from further back, “Is it a jaguar? Is it? Is it?”

 

I tell both idiots that it’s a Florida bobcat, who is dead.  The big guy asks if Florida bobcats live here.  I want to say something snarky about the name, but let it pass.  Then he presses in close to me and asks me to open the carrier so he can get a picture.  I tell him he’s rude, shut the camper door down in his face and got back in the truck.  I have to wait again for quite some time to get a break in traffic so I can head back to the sanctuary, where the body will be weighed, bagged, tagged and put in the freezer for Honor Thy Pet to come get him.  They will cremate him and his ashes will be buried with Divinity and others when we plant the next trees.

 

As I start the hour long drive back, I sense he’s “still here” in a spiritual sense.  I try to explain what’s going on.  I ask if he wants to come in.  I set the ground rules first and let him know that there are a lot of us in here.  Some are full time residents.  Some come and go.  But the rules are the same for everyone; you can experience life through my body, but you have to defer to cooler heads and gentler spirits.  For instance:  “I’ll let you drive, but you aren’t going to start smashing into cars just because one of them hit you.  Got it?”

 

I always wonder how the equilibrium is kept in here, but it is, so I keep offering a ride to “strangers”.  I guess none of them is as strange as me, so that keeps things in check.  At any rate, it always feels the same.  Whether they