This crazy looking photo is one I took, minutes after I first saw Shadow, the Mystery Cat, late one night, in the southeast part of the San Fernando Valley. This isn't Shadow, this is a weird photo of the coyote it was fighting, which I now call the "red coyote." #steveemigphotos
I've been in and out of homelessness over the last 20 years, and I managed to do that without using drugs or alcohol. I wound up a taxi driver living in my cab for the first time in 1999, and have been struggling with making a decent living ever since. That struggle is a whole series of stories in itself, which I won't get into.
In these years of homelessness, I've seen a lot of wildlife, while living in my taxi, and driving people around late at night, in both California and North Carolina. In the 5 or so years I've been actually homeless and living in the woods or on the streets, I saw a bunch more. Many of the critters I've run into are those you'd expect: raccoons, opossums, deer, skunks, snakes, lizards, tortoises, rats, birds, and lots and lots of bugs and spiders. You want to have a scary Halloween, spend a night on the streets near a dumpster in downtown L.A., there really are rats as big as small cats. I even had a pencil sized rat snake show up inside my tent in North Carolina. Not the way you want your morning to start.
But I've also run into other animals, ones you don't really think of when you think of homeless people. I've seen coyotes dozens of times, the last encounter with one was four feet away when I poked my head out of my sleeping bag. That was a couple of weeks ago. I've had a mouse run up the leg of my shorts while sleeping a couple of times. I've seen wild turkeys (in NC), foxes, great horned owls, a barn owl, burrowing owls, herons and egrets, a green winged teal (Google that one, they're beautiful birds), many lesser known species of birds, and I almost stepped on a 7-8 foot long python in Orange County. I'm pretty sure that was a pet someone let go. I've seen a bobcat in broad daylight, and it stopped, giving a me a good look at it while broadside. I've had three, maybe four, interactions with wild mountain lions while homeless. They were young ones, about the size of a German Shepherd. Obviously, they chose not to eat me, for which I'm grateful. And if you 're really bored sometime, ask me about how I saved the city of Richmond, Virginia from a nutria infestation. What's a nutria? Imagine a huge, long legged water rat the size of a schnauzer. That's about what a nutria is.
I know most of the mammals wandering around at night in urban and rural areas. But a couple of months ago, I saw a creature that had me stumped. I sleep without a tent at the moment, on a wide stretch of sidewalk. I woke to a hissing and growling commotion one night, maybe 2:00 or 3:00 am. In the fast food restaurant patio area, across the street, I saw a coyote pulling on the end of a trash bag. There were two coyotes that roamed through my area every night or two, and I usually woke up and saw them once every week or two. They leave me alone, although they'll sniff around, up close, if a wandering tweeker or someone drops some food nearby.
What freaked me out that night is that the coyote was fighting a huge black cat for the bag of garbage. Now there's a black cat that lives in a fenced off area nearby, I call her Momma Cat. She's raised three litters of kittens since I've been in that area, and she's as street smart as feral cats come, and a good mom, hence the name. But she's large, but a normal sized black cat. She disappears when the coyotes roll through. That's part of the reason she lives in a fenced in area, and comes out to hunt or scavenge. So it wasn't her.
There was a bush blocking my view at first, but then the coyote pulled the bag a few feet, with the black cat pulling on the other end. It was a HUGE black cat. It was also dark, though there are several street lights, and I'm 55, my eyes aren't as sharp as they once were. The cat let go of the bag, and I only saw it for a second or two. It was so fucking big I thought it might be a black leopard at first. OK, black leopards aren't native to L.A.. But people do keep them as exotic pets, and the L.A Zoo is only a few miles away. So that was possible, if not plausible.
Seeing what might be a black leopard, a cat big enough to fight with a coyote, made me a bit nervous. Part of homelessness is going to sleep every night knowing there are about 100 realistic ways you could die before morning. Crazy people make up most of that list, and weather and disease make up a lot more. But mountain lions, stray dogs, coyotes, a rattlesnake, and a few other animals are on that list. An escaped black leopard would add to the list of scary and dangerous creatures out there.
Luckily for me, the cat was still wandering around, and I got another quick glimpse of it. It looked like a long haired black cat, except it was freakin' huge, like a bit smaller than a bobcat. So over the next few days, I looked up every wild cat around the world, so see if it was some obscure exotic cat, someone's pet that got loose. I couldn't find a match.
It didn't have the ear tufts or face tufts of a bobcat, and it had along tail. One idea was that Momma cat got knocked up by a local bobcat, producing a huge black cat. But nope, that didn't seem to be the case. The closest match I could find was an Ocelot for size, and Momma cat for the black color and long fur. While an ocelot was about the right size, they have tan fur, light color on their undersides, and spots much like a leopard. My best guess was that someone's pet ocelot got loose, hooked up with Momma cat, and produced a huge black cat. But that seemed like a really big long shot.In the couple weeks after that first sighting, I saw the huge black cat again, twice. I named it "Shadow the Mystery Cat."
One night I went to take a leak in some bushes, and suddenly these two eyes opened a few feet away. I just saw the reflected disks of the eyeshine, and it was close enough to get a quick, but good, look at it. Sitting up straight, with that good posture cats are known for, Shadow was at least two feet high. And it didn't freak when I walked right up to it to take a leak. It was just a ginormous black, long haired cat, and it acted like a feral cat, even a pet. As I finished whizzing, it crept off into the shadows and disappeared again. I saw it one more time after that, walking along the curb for a while, so I had a good view, and a reference for it's size. Again, it was a black ca, just twice the size a large black cat should be.
Then, a few days ago, I was watching YouTube videos about animals. A video about the history of black cats popped up on the side, so I watched it. It finally occurred to me that there was one thing I never thought to Google, and that was "Huge black cat." When I did, I found photos of huge house cats, a breed called Maine Coons. So I googled, "black Maine coon." And there it was.
This is exactly what Shadow, the Mystery Cat of the Studio City area, looks like. I pulled this pic off the web. Shadow wasn't a wild exotic pet at all, but probably was/is someone's pet Maine Coon that got out and roamed about for a while. And just how big are black Main Coon cats? Check out this photo below.
Yeah. Main Coons are ginormous. Freakin' huge. I borrowed this pic from the web, as well. So when you're out having fun tonight, in the east end of The Valley this Halloween, know that Shadow, the big, black mystery cat is out there, too. It seems friendly to humans, but will tangle with a coyote. So if you see Shadow tonight, don't try to pet it, consider yourself lucky to see the biggest, baddest black cat roaming the Los Angeles area. Happy Halloween.
No comments:
Post a Comment