text: During the last two weeks of May, large numbers of cats in Tacoma, Yakima, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield, Vancouver, British Columbia, and other western cities came down with the rapidly developing, universally fatal disease. Newspapers across the nation reported new outbreaks on their front pages.
  
  Beth Murphy, owner of the Coos Bay Cattery tearfully locked the doors of her breeding business. Without cats, she saw no point in keeping the business operating.
  
  When he was seven years old, Juan Valenzuela's father had introduced him to the great outdoors on a hiking trip in the Grand Canyon. Juan's love of nature and open spaces had begun with that trip and was a dominant facet of his life. Now twenty-two, the native Chumash-American was hiking the John Muir Trail alone, through the high country, in Sequoia National Park. Much of the trail was still buried under snowpack. Resting by an ice-covered tarn, he noticed movement about a hundred yards away.
  
  "Madre de Dios!" he gasped. The tan shape moved again, and Juan recognized it as a mountain lion. Juan's ancestors were Southern California mountain Chumash and had hunted pumas in the old days. His father had told him that the old hunters would use every part of the kill—the meat for food, the bones for tools, the hide for clothing; nothing was thrown away.
  
  Juan drew his hunting knife and remained watchful. The cat also stayed where it was. After some twenty minutes, Juan realized that something was not right. By now, the beast should have made a move or slunk away. Juan slowly began inching toward it. The animal did not move. Shortly, the young man was within a stone's throw of the puma. He stared, and the cat stared back, but it still made no move. There was terror in the eyes of the animal.
  
  He then saw why. The cat was sick—very sick. It was emaciated, and there was mucous stuff and blood around its eyes and nose. The young man stood in awe a long moment. Presently, Juan, having been imbued with a love of and respect for animals by his father and mother, quickly put the animal out of its misery with several well-placed thrusts.