Making friends with leopards

I’ve always been an animal lover. I’ve heard childhood stories of me reacting joyfully to bullock carts only as a baby and chasing squirrels as a toddler to having memories of hanging out with street dogs and cats, in the cowshed at our local milkman’s place hanging with the calves, calling various aunties by their dog’s name like Tootsie Auntie, Teddy Auntie, etc. and kidnapping puppies and trying to hide them from my family so that I could keep them (my family always made me return the puppy to its mother in a couple of hours because I would invariably get caught). I was also lucky that those aunties loved their dogs and were not offended!

Ammamma has always been advising me to be careful with the street dogs, not to pick up a squirrel, not to touch pigeons, not hug every cow I meet, pet every cat, etc. She’s always been cautious and it’s also probably why I’ve been rabies or disease free. 

A few years ago, thanks to humans encroaching on forest land (yuck), a leopard was spotted in and around the city. This made the news, and my Ammamma watches the local news without fail every day. The news of a leopard wandering in the city resulted in the following conversation over the phone.

Ammamma: Hello Romy, where are you?

Me: Hi Ammamma, I’m at work. Is everything okay?

Ammamma: Yes. There is a leopard in the city. It’s running loose and they haven’t caught it yet!

Me: Oh no! I hope they catch it and not kill it or something.

Ammamma: Romy, I want you to promise me something. Promise on Sai Baba that you will not go looking for it and you won’t try to make friends with it. It will kill you. 

Me: Um, what? Okay, Ammamma, I promise I will not look for the leopard to make friends with it! 

Yes, at 20 something, my grandmother warned me away from making friends with a leopard. She felt that at 20 something, I would not have this common sense to stay away from the wild animal, and that she had to extract a promise from on all that she holds Holy, that I would not do it. 

I am touched that she believes that I have such a strong love for animals that I would go chasing after a wild leopard to adopt it, and also mildly offended that she thinks I am an idiot around them. I’m sure next time this happens, and it will because have you met the human race, she will indeed repeat this conversation.