“A puma is not a bird," said Tobias, after a hundred paces. "It is a kind of cat - felis concolor. You may see it soon: it is moving along with us, on the right."
The word cat brought nothing into Jack's mind but a fleeting image of a shabby, brownish-black little creature called Tib that disgraced the drawing-room at home, and he plodded on in silence. Every hundred yards or so they changed shoulders, and during the third change there was a coughing noise to their right, a series of coughs, huge, deep, throaty coughs, that culminated in a shattering roar, unimaginably loud.
"Not a bird, Jack, you see," said Tobias.
"How big?" cried Jack, vividly alive now, with terror coursing up and down his spine.
"The size of an indifferent lion," said Tobias. "You can see him if you bend and look under the yellow bush. He is tearing up the earth, and biting it."
"Can he climb?"
"Oh, admirably."
"Toby, what shall we do?"
"Why, unless you wish to go and look at him, we had better go on. It is getting late. But do not hurry so, Jack, nor make jerking movements. If he should come out, take no notice of him, or look at him kindly - do not provoke him. He is not a froward puma, I believe.”