Is there a pleasure in not knowing if the decades-old mystery about a cat prowling the country’s South Island is fact or fiction?
The photograph is disappointing. Blurry, as they all are. It shows a dark blob striding up a leafy trail in the distance. The size of the creature is hard to deduce, though the witness, an osteopath named Mark Orr who was out mountain-biking with friends in Hanmer Springs, said the animal was “about knee-height”, looked “very strong and quite stocky”, and “just had an aura about it”.
An aura. Almost all animals have auras, don’t they? Even feral cats, goats, wild pigs. While the mention of the aura seemed strange, it was also compelling. I want to believe.
