Part 2
The lynx’s answer was barely audible, but the black cat heard it.
His next cry stopped halfway out. He pressed his face to the carrier door and listened. At the same moment, the lynx’s frantic heart rate eased, and her oxygen number climbed another two points. Neither change was enough to call a recovery. Together, they were enough to make me reconsider the room.
I had separated them because I needed physical access and infection control. That decision had saved her life. Leaving them where they could not hear or see each other was serving no medical purpose at all.
I asked Cal to move the carrier onto a sturdy chair beside the oxygen enclosure. The black cat tried to stand when he saw her, failed, then pushed his shoulder against the wire closest to her. The lynx let her head sink back to the pad. Her breathing remained labored, but the panicked pulling at her ribs softened.
“Well,” Cal said. “Put that in the chart.” I did.
At 11:40 a.m., I wrote: Companion moved within visual and auditory range. Both patients less agitated. I did not have a proper box to check for that observation, so I used the margin.
The state wildlife officer returned my call twenty minutes later. By then the highway out of Pine Crossing was closed and the licensed rehabilitation team could not reach us. Dr. Gwen Ortiz, the wildlife veterinarian who supervised the nearest permitted center, asked for photographs, respiratory findings, and the drug record. She agreed with stabilization and instructed me to maintain strict barrier separation until we had preliminary disease screening on both animals.
“No nose-to-nose contact,” she said. “I know they arrived together. Arrival isn’t a health clearance.”
“Understood.”
“And Mara? A Canada lynx in the lower forty-eight is not just another injured barn cat. Document every contact and every decision.” I looked at the black cat’s torn ear, the fish still drying on his back paw from the food he had refused. “I’m documenting.”
Cal stayed while I examined him through the last of the sedative. The cat was male, unneutered, dehydrated, and underweight by several pounds. His paw pads were split from ice, one canine was broken, and old scars crossed newer ones on his face. None of those injuries explained why a domestic cat had been found miles from the nearest house with a sick wildcat under his body.
Cal leaned over the carrier, careful to keep his fingers out of reach. “You want the name I use for him?”
“You have one?”
“Sort of. He’s been showing up behind my feed room for near a year. Never came inside, never let me closer than ten feet. I put food down for him every Friday after the grain delivery, so Friday’s what I called him.”
Cal rubbed a wet circle into the brim of his cap. He had once borrowed a humane trap from me, he admitted, but returned it unused after Friday vanished for four days. Cal’s two cattle dogs were unsafe around cats, and the heated feed room opened directly into their run. Leaving food had felt like the useful thing he could do without making a promise he could not keep.
“I figured if the bowl emptied, he was all right,” he said. “That was a convenient way not to ask where he went afterward.”
There was no benefit in punishing him for a limit he understood now. The meals had helped Friday survive long enough to reach the lynx. But Cal was right about convenience: evidence that an animal had eaten was not evidence that the rest of its life was safe.
The name was plain enough to suit him. “When did you last see Friday?” I asked.
“Three days ago, before the storm. He took half a chicken thigh and headed north instead of back under the equipment shed. Thought maybe he’d finally found a warmer barn.” Cal looked toward the oxygen hood. “The old tack shed is almost two miles north.”
Two miles was not far for a healthy cat in summer. For Friday, in deep snow, during a storm, it was a serious journey. For a sick young lynx, it should have been impossible.
I kept that thought out of the record. I had tracks, temperatures, lung sounds, and blood values. I did not have a witness to whatever had happened before Cal opened the shed.
By late afternoon, the lynx could breathe through her nose for several seconds at a time. She remained oxygen-dependent, but the blue tinge had left her gums. I offered a small amount of warmed liquid food and watched her swallow. Friday watched too.
Only after she had taken several mouthfuls did he turn to his own dish. He did not rush it. He ate with one eye on the oxygen hood, pausing whenever she coughed, until the dish was clean. Then he lowered himself with his spine against the carrier door nearest her and slept.
Cal left before dark to check his cattle. I rolled a camp cot into the treatment room, turned off all but the task lights, and settled into the night routine of recording temperatures, adjusting fluids, and pretending not to look at the clock between checks.
At 2:15 a.m., the lynx’s fever began to fall. At 3:05, she pulled her forelegs under herself. At 3:40, she tried to stand.
Friday was awake before I was fully out of the chair. He gave a short, low sound—not a meow, more like air moving over a bottle’s mouth. The lynx turned her head toward him. She rose on trembling legs and took one step in the direction of his carrier.
Her shoulder struck the clear wall of the oxygen enclosure. She recoiled and sat hard. After a moment, she tried again, this time angling toward the water dish. She passed it by inches and hit the opposite wall with her whiskers and forehead.
I moved my hand in front of her face. Her eyes followed nothing. When I shone a penlight from the side, both pupils stayed wide and black.
Friday made the low sound again. The lynx turned toward him at once. She had not been looking for him. She had been listening because she could not see…
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