It was the third time in my life that I’ve stumbled into a big cat.  The first, a bobcat bounding over snow drifts alongside the road as I walked home from fifth grade, silent and swift, gone in a flash like some terrestrial-tethered shooting star.  Years later, a mountain lion traipsing across a Forest Service two-track in the piñon savannah of northern Arizona.  Dusk on the painted desert, the cat picked up its head looked right at my pickup, and continued unhurried off into the brush.  The last cat I damn near ran over, speeding along a dirt road slicing through the natural gas fields of the Wyoming Rockies.  The tuft-eared, nip-tailed bob had been stalking a rabbit on the opposite side of the road when I came around the bend, interrupting his hunt.  It surprised me to find that the cat is so much faster than a 20th of a second, the blurry orange-ish spot on the two frames I took bear the only evidence of my chance encounter.  Perhaps these animals aren’t meant to be taken for souvenirs, their story best told in glimpses, haiku, concise riddles rather than epic tales.