Carmen felt along the wall for a light switch and found one. The awful scene came alive before her in even harsher truth: brocade couch, oversized armchairs draped in velvet and silk tapestry, a swear-to-God actual bearskin rug with taxidermied head intact. Every square inch of the home was swathed in its own expensive and ugly décor. The panorama was so overwhelming that Carmen almost missed it: the huge metal cage nestled into a corner near the front door, reaching almost to the ceiling. Inside lay a curled, sleeping figure beside a water bowl and a slab of untouched still-bloody meat, beside a trail of blood drops leading to the front door.

Carmen’s hand went to her mouth in almost choreographed, cinematic precision. She crept toward the metal enclosure, nerves rattled, her whole body trembling in excitement and terror.

As if sensing her nearing presence, the creature stirred and sat up. Its lips curled and a long hiss escaped between needle-sharp incisors. A panther, a young one. She identified the panther almost immediately without knowing she held Florida panther in her mind’s encyclopedia of feline species. Carmen leaned closer, ignored the animal’s cautionary sounds. As if challenged, the panther’s hissing got louder. And then they just stared at each other.

Carmen marveled at the similarities between the panther and her cat Linda: the ears, parallel and curved back, the tight wiring of the whiskers, the way the nose slightly quivered. But there were differences too: the sinewy muscles that rippled the panther’s sleek skin as if readying to pounce, the way its long teeth glistened like ivory knives. Some part of her, almost against her will but perhaps not really, wanted to reach over and open the cage, wanted to smear herself in blood and feel the body give way in sacrifice. To be an animal, to carry nothing of the past, nothing past the immediate need to satiate a hunger. She wouldn’t take it personally if the panther attacked. She would understand. She would forgive. She was so caught up in the moment she almost missed the headlights that moved a spotlight over the cage, almost didn’t hear the crunchy, gravelly sound of a car coming to a stop in front of the house.