Every window in my house reflects the garden design outside, so the window view is not only beautiful, but also dynamic, for example, a group of birds flying, squirrels climbing trees, or cats lazily walking by… Due to the changes in the four seasons, it is like a vivid oil painting.
Outside the large window of the living room is a fish pond. In winter, it is sometimes below zero in Belgium, and the pond will then freeze a thick layer of ice. The day which my friend visited, it was a snowy day as well. Recalling what happened on that day, it’s more like an incident than a story. ( kind of embarrassing )
A cup of hot chocolate in hand…although it’s freezing outside, it’s cozy and warm in the living room, while the fireplace is burning wood.
Just when I prepared to bring some cake from the kitchen, I heard a loud scream from my friend in the living room! ( The cake almost dropped onto the floor, what a shock ! )
I rushed back to the living room. “What happened?”
She pointed to the window, “A leopard came to the pond!”
I laughed. ( relieved that it’s not really an accident. )
Well, I am not a rich woman living in Abu Dhabi raising a leopard or a lion as a pet, but an ordinary citizen living in Belgium. What she saw is the Bangladeshi leopard cat as a pet owned by my neighbor.
You don’t have to think she’s hysterical. The leopard cat was carefully passing over the ice, the body stretched, and the weather outside was faint, mistakenly thinking a leopard was not exaggerating.
Since that day, every time now when she mentions this experience, she will also explain that because I live next to the forest, she often hears that I ever encounter a deer while jogging or taking a walk in the forest, so…
Plus purchasing a Bangladeshi leopard cat is costly. She has lived in Belgium for many years and it was the first time for her to witness the leopard cat in person.
In fact, I was also shocked when I for the first time encountered that cat in my garden last spring. It was the blooming time for wisteria. I was doing gardening work and when I turned around and I thought I saw a little tiger (big shocking).
Maybe you will say how’s that possible a tiger in a residential area? But just because living in a civilized society, and suddenly seeing unfamiliar animals at such close distances, you would be easily frightened. It explains well that ‘things rarely seen, easily big fuss.’
Since my neighbor bought this leopard cat, my garden has added another scene. The neighbor once ‘complained’ that he spent a lot of fortune for this leopard cat, but it stayed in my garden more than in his…
My neighbor’s garden is well taken care of, every space is clean and orderly; while mine is “chaotic” in a natural style – so maybe that is why more attractive for animals?Regardless what the reason is, it has become a daily visitor, even a member of the garden, and I’ve become the biggest beneficiary – sometimes watching it standing on the garden fence, like the god of the ancient Egyptian garden guardian, Sometimes, it goes to the pond to drink water, and the face expression is like a wild predator .
The funny thing is, after the girlfriend spread around the story, there are many people in our friend circle want to come to visit it in my garden. Thanks to it that I have the illusion that I were a tycoon living in the Middle East.
It’s funny because it’s not even my cat!!! (haha)
PS: My friend told me later that in fact, she originally planned to talk about a lot of daily problem on the day she came to visited. It had been a ‘down period’ in her life. But after being frightened by the “leopard”, the trouble seemed to be ‘shocked away’ too. She felt that being alive is already a lucky thing. She also made a conclusion: “If one survives, there will be future fortunes!”
Well, the idiom does not fit for this incident, but since the ending is full of positive energy, I will not correct her exaggerating idiom and her story of the “Leopard” which needs to add a word of ‘cat’.
