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continue on to Otjiwarongo, or take my casual acquaintance’s recommendation and detour west for a couple of days? Slipping back into my rented Toyota, I turned left and started down the well-maintained dirt road.
    The lodge at Mount Etjo (where on March 21, 1990, the Namibian Declaration of Independence had been signed) was even nicer than advertised. Though the weather was incredibly hot, I immediately signed up to stay over for a couple of nights and agreed to join the next available game drive. Situated amid the Okonjati Wildlife Sanctuary’s 75,000 acres of wilderness, the lodge offered plenty to see, from kudu and Damara dik-diks to hippos and friendly elephants—including one young female that insistently kept trying to purloin an Italian visitor’s camera.
    Hot, sweaty, and tired after the game drive, the other four travelers hurried from the 4x4 to their cool rooms. Hot, sweaty, and energized, I decided to take a walk. Like sex, the prospect of a freshwater shower in a sizzling climate is enhanced the longer it is delayed.
    It was while wandering around the lodge compound that I came upon an enclosure demarcated by a flimsy wall of chicken wire. No more than five feet high at any point, it seemed wholly inadequate to contain anything bigger than a languorous desert tortoise. Wiping sweat from my eyes with the back of my hand, I decided that it was empty. Searching the interior, I noted a few scrubby plants, sand, and some scraggly shade trees. Nothing else but shadows.
    Then one of the shadows moved.
    My eyes widened, and my heart beat a little faster. Off to my left and right beside the insubstantial fence, something sleek and powerful was stirring in the shady indistinctness of a dappled patch of soil. I took a couple of steps toward it. It moved again. Then it yawned. I had a glimpse of teeth, fur, legs. Leopard? No, surely not. Not in that pen, whose fragile barrier any healthy child could easily have pushed over.
    A voice startled me. So focused was I on the softly panting shape of the full-grown male cheetah that I hadn’t heard the guide come up behind me.
    “That’s Felix.” The man with the strong South African accent nodded in the big cat’s direction. The afternoon heat was oppressive, slowing my thoughts as well as my movements. “Would you like to meet him?”
    “Uh, meet him?”
    The guide smiled. “It’s up to you. If you’re willing to go inside his enclosure, I’ll take you in. You can interact.”
    Interact . Under the circumstances, it was a word pregnant with more than one possible outcome. I looked once more at the wobbly fence. Describing it as frail would have flattered it.
    “Can’t he get out?”
    “Oh, sure,” the guide said. “But he doesn’t. It’s his home.” He proceeded to tell me the cheetah’s story.
    Felix’s mother had been killed by a car or truck. Of her two cubs, found alone and crying by the roadside, only Felix was still alive. His sibling had been killed by a mamba. Now Felix was fully mature, and this cockleshell compound was his home. If he really wanted to, he could likely leave any time he so desired, even though, unlike many cats, cheetahs are poor climbers. I looked again at the barrier. It would not have to be climbed. A single leap would allow its sole occupant to clear it.
    Torn between desire and common sense, I debated. “Are you sure this is OK?” Wearing proper safari clothes didn’t make me a shikari.
    The guide shrugged. “Felix knows me. You should be OK as long as I’m with you.”
    Should be. Since childhood it had been a dream of mine to get close to one of the big cats. I think it must be a dream everyone has. If such an encounter came to pass, I had always imagined it would take place at some shopping-mall Christmastime photo-op and involve a well-fed veteran feline performer from the movies or television, or perhaps at a private zoo featuring an elderly people-habituated lion used to having its picture taken alongside giggling