Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion - Softcover

3.86

22 ratings by Goodreads

9781570611544: Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570611548 ISBN 13: 9781570611544

Publisher: Sasquatch Books, 1999

Twenty essays by such voices as Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Pam Houston, and Rick Bass, explore the natural history, encounters with humans, and controversial future of the mountain lion

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Review:

North America's largest wildcat stalks a landscape of myth, fear, and isolation. Most people--even ardent outdoors enthusiasts--will never see one. "In eleven years of hiking, boating, guiding, and exploring," says writer Pam Houston, "I've come face to face with nearly every North American game species"--except a mountain lion. But as we encroach increasingly on their habitat, the tally of sightings goes up, along with stories of attacks on humans and even deaths. The essays that make up Shadow Cat introduce us to the animal and the controversies that surround it. Divided into three parts, the collection covers natural history, eyewitness accounts (from biologists, hunters, and admirers), and the complex, sometimes nasty politics surrounding Felis concolor, variously known as cougar, catamount, panther, puma, painter, and mountain lion. Noted conservation writer Ted Williams exalts in the animal's population comeback after decades of persecution; Rick Bass tells of his own history with a legendary lion in the Yaak Valley of Montana; and Chris Bolgiano puzzles over improbable sightings in the East. The collection's true high moments arrive, however, in skillful editing that reveals an interconnected community of cat fanciers and the complicated ethics they navigate in their avocations. In "Eat of This Flesh," celebrated environmental writer David Quammen (Song of the Dodo) sits down to a meal of stir-fried lion, chewing over some difficult ethical questions: "I will let the butcher do all of my killing. I will destroy habitat, but not animals. I will eat stir-fried shrimp, stir-fried beef, even stir-fried elk, but not stir-fried lion. Huh?" In the next piece, E. Donnall Thomas Jr.--doctor, writer, bow hunter, and the chef in the previous essay--serves up a taste of the hunt, musing,

No matter how many times I stare up into an evergreen canopy and see a mountain lion, I doubt that I will ever become accustomed to the experience, and to tell the truth, I hope I never do. Tawny and graceful, the cat looks as if it belongs on another continent, if not another planet.

As coauthor Elizabeth Grossman explains in her introduction, "these powerful predators have, in many ways, become emblematic of the debate over [preserving] wildness and wilderness"--a debate that more and more is binding those who would hunt a lion with those who would protect it. Such ironies seem almost appropriate. The whiskered face that emerges in Shadow Cat is of a regal yet inscrutable predator, one threatened by habitat loss, public misapprehension, and its own uncanny ability to survive. --Langdon Cook

From Kirkus Reviews:

A broad, intelligent, at times enticingly written, and deeply, appealingly partisan collection of essays on Felis concolor, the one-color cat, a.k.a. cougar, catamount, puma, panther, painter, mountain lion. Environmentalists Ewing (Lucky Bears and Itchy Hares, not reviewed) and Grossman (a former literary agent) have mustered a strong introductory sampler, with a literary and experiential emphasis. Included here is Terry Tempest Williams's starlit encounter with a mountain lion while ferrying home 15 Navajo children in the back of her truck; the kids spontaneously sing themselves free of the scare the cat gives them. Rick Bass tells the story of his dog, a cougar, a disputed quail, and a standoff in which everyone survives. Verlyn Klinkenborg, who has a tendency to overthink on the page, still contributes a concise essay on lion hunting (``hunting is really the skillful effort to lessen improbability in the highly contingent world of nature''). David Quammen probes with his usual acuity and crackerjack writing the ethical and ecological contexts of lion hunting. Then the central character of Quammen's piece, E. Donnall Thomas Jr., offers his own snappy essay on hunting dogs (``it's hard to beat a hound dog as an icon for slouching opportunism''), which also makes detours into the ethics of lion hunting. Even the clunkers have something to offer: Ted Williams is a bogus hipster and gratingly acerbic, but he delivers a good history of the mountain lion's perseverance; Pam Houston spends too much time establishing her bragging rights, but she captures some of the yearning the cat can provoke. There are 20 essays all told, ranging from critiques of the government wildlife services, whose staffers rarely get to see life in the wild, to an eerie story from Ellen Meloy of a lonely backcountry confrontation she has with a dangerous man and his abducted panther. Decidedly in the cat's corner, though never egregiously so, these essays portray a glorious animal that provides a bracing and splendid reminder to readers of just where they fit in the food chain. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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