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children clutching its scruffy mane. Not in the middle of northern Namibia amid heat and sand and far greater variables. I told myself that having been raised by humans, Felix might qualify as half-domesticated.
    Of course, that also meant he qualified as half-wild.
    I had not come to Namibia on a wine-tasting tour. I nodded at the guide. “Let’s go in.”
    Maybe it was only a chicken-wire fence, but once I was standing inside the enclosure, the meager meandering barrier suddenly seemed a lot more substantial than it had from the other side. The guide picked up a well-chewed hard rubber sphere about the size of a volleyball and tossed it.
    “Here, Felix! Get your toy, Felix. Go get it.”
    At the sound of the encouraging guide’s voice, the cheetah lifted his head, looked at the man a moment, and then slumped back down. The guide continued to try to get Felix to play, or just to stand up. Just as studiously, the cheetah ignored him. Standing nearby and watching, I was acutely conscious of still being encased in a veneer of gummy sweat and dust from the afternoon game drive. Shower , I thought longingly. But instead of leaving, I made myself stand there and study the recumbent, somnolent carnivore. Heat be damned: I knew these were precious moments not to be wasted.
    Felix was big, full-grown, but compared to a lion or tiger not at all that intimidating. Acinonyx jubatus resides in its own genus. Famed as the fastest of all land animals, capable of reaching speeds of nearly eighty miles an hour, the cheetah can accelerate from a standing start to seventy miles per hour in three seconds. A Porsche can’t do that. Neither can a Ferrari.
    Felix, it was becoming increasingly apparent, was disinclined to provide proof.
    The guide kept tossing the ball. With great dignity, Felix continued to ignore both it and him. While it was a privilege simply to be permitted to stand in such close unbarred proximity to such a magnificent animal, the afternoon heat was making me drowsy. Surely, now it was time to leave and partake of the refreshing delights of my room. Or to do something else. Anything to alleviate the tedium and the heat.
    Instead of backing toward the exit, I heard myself saying, “Can I get closer to him?”
    The guide shrugged. Was that a smile filled with humor, or a cautioning one? “Up to you.”
    It seemed as if everything and anything was up to me. Handing the guide my video camera and asking him to shoot some footage, I walked slowly over to Felix, never taking my eyes off him. My deliberate and careful approach aroused him not at all. He didn’t so much as twitch. Slowly, I crouched down beside him. From what seemed like a great distance, I heard the guide say, “He likes to be petted and scratched on his head.”
    O-o-o-o-h . . . k-a-a-a-y. Reaching out with my right hand, I began to stroke the fur between the cheetah’s ears, exercising a firm, consistent motion. After all , I kept telling myself, you have six cats at home, and this is just another cat . Each time I slid my fingers forward onto his forehead, I was acutely conscious of how close they were to that closed mouth.
    Without looking in my direction, Felix lifted his head slightly and began to purr.
    I had no idea what to expect from the encounter, but I did not anticipate that. It was a perfectly normal, ordinary, familiar feline purr. Deeper than that emitted by our cats at home, but unmistakable. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard in my life. I am sure the uncontainable smile that spread across my face made me look like a prime candidate for the post of village idiot, but I didn’t care.
    I stayed like that, petting and stroking Felix, until the guide began to fidget. Unnoticed by me, half an hour had passed in the late afternoon heat.
    “Had enough?” he finally asked me.
    Utterly and completely subsumed in the magic of the moment, I would have stayed until my thighs gave out and I toppled over, but his query reminded