Jack Thornton

I was employed by the Olympic Game Farm in 1978 for three months between my veterinary duties in

Sequim and later in downtown Agnew.

There were not enough medical demands for me as a full-time veterinarian so one of my manufactured duties each morning was to make the rounds checking the caged exotics. In so doing, I regularly went inside the public boundary so as to be right up close to the enclosures housing the big cats.

Each consisted of a spacious outside enclosure behind an 8- to 10-foot square house connected by a small open door on the back wall so the animals could be inside whenever they chose. The front of each house was heavily reinforced chain link fence to afford an optimal viewing experience.



Tiger attack

On several occasions, as I moved directly in front of its house, a tiger visually tracking me from the back of its outside enclosure would run into its house through the entrance door and at considerable speed hit the chain link with all four feet, completely flipping over backward

to land gracefully on its

feet again.

The controlled ease with which such a large feline moved was unbelievable. The hairs on the back of my scalp stood up in fright each time, only to break into applause as the fence absorbed the concussion.

During my inspections, nothing went wrong. A female black leopard generally displayed a nasty attitude toward anyone coming near her. One day as I passed by she was lying on her side. As I came closer she rolled over on her back, wiggled sensually on the ground and, making eye contact, threw me a limp-arm kind of wave as if to invite me to play.

It didn't take long to realize that she was in heat, but her coquettish style was so disarming that for just a moment I thought she might really like me -- yeah, for dinner.



Furious and fearless

The major daily encounter was with an older clouded leopard named Ignatz. When I came inside a certain proximity, Ignatz would hunker up in a corner of his house and, with flattened ears, viciously hiss and snarl. This attitude, I was told, had been displayed consistently in his nine years at the farm.

I always stood in front of him profoundly entranced by the savage intensity of his yellow-green eyes. I have to describe it as an almost religious experience. Those eyes were absolutely frightening. Intense. Furious. Fearless. I felt something beyond good or evil. His eyes were amoral. Sublime.

For nine years he had been exactly what he was - defiant and unyielding. He never relented, he never tamed down.

I have heard it said that to live with a cat, you do so on its terms. I couldn't begin to guess what terms it might take to coexist with Ignatz. Just leave him alone and pray that the wilderness in those eyes lives forever and never surrenders.

Jack Thornton is a semiretired veterinarian. Reach him at columnists@

sequimgazette.com.