AS ROGER AND I walked down the hill toward the center of Old Providence, I wasn’t really sure where I was heading. I’d thought of walking home or maybe down to Aunt Lyssa’s library. There was nothing more we could do at the clinic. Doc Fox had said that he needed to keep Bootsie there overnight and so we might as well go home.

As for what it was that had attacked her, Doc Fox had finally suggested that perhaps someone had a big pet cat, maybe a cougar, that either escaped or was just let go by someone who got tired of caring for it. It had to be some private owner because he’d put in a call to the Roger Williams Park and learned that no dangerous creatures had escaped from there lately—or ever, for that matter. It was illegal, he’d explained, for a private citizen to own such dangerous predators, but that kind of law has never stopped people who are wealthy and insensitive enough. There’s a big trade smuggling exotic animals and endangered species into this country. South American mountain lions, ocelots, African leopards.

“Strange, though,” he had added, “that this mystery cat wasn’t declawed.”

By that he’d meant that most people who purchased a huge feline predator as an illicit pet had the animal’s claws removed when it was little—and not just to save their furniture. You know how it is when your pet kitty cat gets cranky and takes a swipe at you? Imagine a mountain lion doing that! What it meant for the animal was that a life in captivity was its only option for survival. Just last year there’d been a story on TV about a hunter in Maine shooting an animal that turned out to be one of those declawed captive mountain lions someone had let go. The poor creature had been nothing but skin and bones.

Doc Fox had said he’d be letting the police know that there seemed to be a cougar or leopard or something of that sort on the loose. My intuition, though, wasn’t accepting that. I didn’t know what the real answer was, but I just felt that it was something worse. That’s one problem with intuition. Sometimes it’s as if you’re hearing someone tell you something really important—but they’re speaking in a language you can’t understand.

We were strolling along, but my thoughts were running. I’d tried calling Aunt Lyssa again. No luck. Still just the recording. I’d also decided not to go back to the house. The thought of what had happened there was creeping me out. First the phone calls, then the scratching on the door, and then Bootsie. Just thinking of it made me feel like screaming. Instead I was babbling on about something I’d just seen in that issue of People magazine.