The Puma Years Quotes

I loved being inside that cage. It felt like a secret, like hiding in a cupboard when you were a child and tapping the back to see if you could reach Narnia.

When the last tree is cut, when the last animal is hunted, when the last river is polluted, it will be then that man will realise that money cannot be eaten . . .

When the last tree is cut, when the last animal is hunted, when the last river is polluted, it will be then that man will realise that money cannot be eaten .

Perhaps it was the weeks in the cage alone. Perhaps it was the lack of control. Perhaps it was the heat and the fire and the fear. Her instincts would have told her to go to water perhaps. I don't know. All I know is that she's done this thing that she's been too scared to do for all the years she's been here, sitting for endless hours at her beach. I am so proud of her, it swells in my throat and I find it difficult to swallow. All I can see is the back of her head, brown in the sun, splattered with water droplets and lagoon sludge, the slick pale tips of her ears and the dark tuft of her tail swishing through the water. Everything that I feel for her swells up too, unexpected and completely flooring. I'm absolutely wrecked, my body broken and my mind shattered. Is this love? I don't know. All I know is that I've never felt anything like this before in my life.

Less than eight years makes you a Puma. Over eight years makes you a Cougar,

Golden Egg Pets · Golden Dragon · Golden Griffin · Golden Unicorn Diamond Egg Pets · Diamond Dragon · Diamond Griffin · Diamond Unicorn Common Pets · Bandicoot (Aussie Egg) · Buffalo (Cracked Egg or Pet Egg) · Cat (Starter Egg, Cracked Egg, or Pet Egg) · Chicken (Farm Egg) · Dog (Starter Egg, Cracked Egg, or Pet Egg) · Otter (Cracked Egg or Pet Egg) · Robin (Christmas Egg) Uncommon Pets · Black Panther (Jungle Egg) · Blue Dog (Blue Egg) · Capybara (Jungle Egg) · Chocolate Labrador (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Dingo (Aussie Egg) · Drake (Farm Egg) · Fennec Fox (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Meerkat (Safari Egg) · Pink Cat (Pink Egg) · Puma (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Silly Duck (Farm Egg) · Snow Cat (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Wild Boar (Safari Egg) · Wolf (Christmas Egg) Rare Pets · Australian Kelpie (Aussie Egg) · Beaver (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Brown Bear (Jungle Egg) · Bunny (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Cow (Farm Egg) · Elephant (Safari Egg) · Elf Shrew (Christmas Event: 23,000 Gingerbread) · Emu (Aussie Egg) · Hyena (Safari Egg) · Pig (Farm Egg) · Polar Bear (Christmas Egg) · Rabbit (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Rat (Lunar New Year Event 2020 - Rat Box - 14 in 15 Chance) · Reindeer (Christmas Egg) · Rhino (Jungle Egg) · Snow Puma (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Swan (Christmas Egg) Ultra-Rare Pets · Arctic Fox (Christmas Egg) · Bee (Coffee Shop - Honey: 199 Robux - 35 in 40 Chance) · Crocodile (Jungle Egg) · Elf Hedgehog (Christmas Event: eighty,500 Gingerbread) · Flamingo (Safari Egg) · Frog (Aussie Egg) · Horse (Pet Shop: 300 Robux) · Koala (Aussie Egg) · Lion (Safari Egg) · Llama (Farm Egg) · Panda (Lunar New Year Event - Game Pass: 249 Robux) · Penguin (Throw a Golden Goldfish (225 Robux) to a Penguin on the Ice Cream Parlor) · Platypus (Jungle Egg) · Red Panda (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Santa Dog (Christmas Event: 250 Robux) · Shiba Inu (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Sloth (Pet Shop: 199 Robux) · Turkey (Farm Egg) · Zombie Buffalo (Halloween Event) Legendary Pets · Arctic Reindeer (Christmas Egg) · Bat Dragon (Halloween Event 2019: a hundred and eighty,000 Candies) · Crow (Farm Egg) · Dragon (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg) · Evil Unicorn (Halloween Event 2019: 108,000 Candies) · Frost Dragon (Christmas Event 2019: 1,000 Robux) · Giraffe (Safari Egg) · Golden Penguin (Throw a Golden Goldfish (225 Robux) to a Penguin at the Ice Cream Parlor) · Golden Rat (Lunar New Year Event 2020 - Rat Box - 1 in 15 Chance) · Griffin (Gamepass or six hundred Robux) · Kangaroo (Aussie Egg) · King Bee (Coffee Shop - Honey: 199 Robux - 4 in 40 Chance) · Owl (Farm Egg) · Parrot (Jungle Egg) · Queen Bee (Coffee Shop - Honey: 199 Robux - 1 in 40 Chance) · Shadow Dragon (Halloween Event 2019: 1,000 Robux) · Turtle (Aussie Egg) · Unicorn (Cracked Egg, Pet Egg, or Royal Egg)

It was very hard for him to admit it to himself, but having her around had brought him a strange comfort, and he had no idea why. Looking out for her made him feel better somehow. Making sure she was fed and protected against danger—that seemed to work for him, too. It was a lot of trouble, actually. If she hadn’t been around, he wouldn’t go to as much bother with meals. Three out of four nights he’d just open a can of something, but because she’d been sick and needed a hot meal he’d put his best foot forward. Plus, she needed to put on another few pounds. He had spent a lot of time wondering if searching for him, sleeping in her car and probably skipping meals had made her thin and weak. Knowing she was going to be there when he got home, pestering and bothering him, made him hurry a little bit through his work, his chores. He couldn’t figure out why—he was damn sure not going to go over all that old business about the war, about Bobby. Just thinking about that stuff put a boulder in his gut and made his head ache. And yet, he had a ridiculous fear that this phone call to her sister would result in her saying, “I have to go home now.” But there was no use worrying about it—she’s going to leave soon no matter what the sister says. It’s not as though she’d camp out in his cabin through the holidays—she had people at home. Never mind her grousing about her sister, at least she had a sister who loved her, cared about her. And what had she said when she asked for a ride to town? Just a little while longer… It was the first relationship he’d had in about four years. Old Raleigh didn’t count—that had been pure servitude. If the man hadn’t left him part of a mountain, Ian would never have suspected Raleigh was even slightly grateful for the caretaking in the last months. Ian saw people regularly—he worked for the moving company when the weather was good, had his firewood route, went places like the library, had a meal out now and then. People were nice to him, and he was cordial in return. But he never got close; there had been no relationships. No one poked at him like she did, making him smile in spite of himself. That business with the puma—her opening the outhouse door and yelling at him like that—he knew what that was about. She was afraid he’d get hurt by the cat and risked her own skin to warn him. Been a long damn time since he felt anyone really cared about him at all. Maybe that was it, he thought. Marcie thinks she cares, and it’s because I was important to Bobby. If we’d just met somehow, it wouldn’t be like this. But that didn’t matter to him right now. He liked the feeling, alien though it was. He’d be back for her in two and a half hours and while he was delivering a half a cord to some dentist in Fortuna he’d watch the time so he wouldn’t be late getting back to pick her up. And with every split log he stacked, he’d be hoping her family wouldn’t find a way to get her home right away. *

Leaving isn't a failure. Not if I choose to do something I'm proud of every day. And I'm so lucky to be able to choose.

You're the only girl I love right now, but in ten years, I'll love another girl. She'll call you 'Mommy.

I’ve spent my life praying to be thin and now I am, and yet I realise that wasn’t what I was praying for at all. I was just praying to feel comfortable in my own skin.

Florida panther, cougar, mountain lion, catamount, painter, mountain screamer, red tiger, cuguacuarana, ghost cat . . . It is alleged that they have over eighty recorded names, more than any other animal. But for me, in Bolivia, I knew them simply as “puma” (pronounced poo

The jungle really seems to listen to everything. I've never felt so vulnerable. It won't stop listening, and I don't know how to tell it that I hate it.

Environmental justice cannot be separated from social justice. The two are deeply intertwined.

I wave my arms, whimpering, spinning on the spot. The jungle is everywhere and, as I turn and see a monkey sitting on a signpost, I leap back with a yelp. He’s the size of a small child, hunched, with thick ginger fur.

She tells me her theory that, for her, rescued animals are like onions. You work so hard to peel off one layer of anxiety, only to expose another, and then another that you had absolutely no idea was hiding underneath.

He can walk away if he wants. He has dignity. This is all any of us can ask for.

I saw, not so much a culture of pathology, as a culture fitted for a pathological world. To fight, stab, or shoot over respect seemed ridiculous to those who already had the society's respect. But all the boys and young men of my youth were keenly aware of how little they owned, how little of their lives they actually controlled. And so some of them made their stand on the scuff mark on their suede Pumas, on the trespassing of some corner, on the hard looks of strangers. "I ain't no punk," was the motto then, and the motto was adopted by those who knew what they were not but had no power to declare what they were.

The similarity to Nintendo or PlayStation has a chilling implication: Researchers have found that when players do well at a video game, the amount of dopamine released in their brains roughly doubles, and that this surge can linger for at least a half-hour afterward. So the more “price points” you can see, the more your brain will fool itself into thinking it has detected a predictable pattern in the numbers—and the more powerfully your dopamine system will kick in. As we’ve seen, it can take as few as three price changes to make you think you’ve spotted a trend; in years past, when investors got their stock prices out of the newspaper, it could take three days to gather that much data, while today a market website will get you there in less than sixty seconds. No wonder, by the late 1990s, the typical “investor” in popular tech stocks like Qualcomm, VeriSign, and Puma Technology owned them for an average of less than eight days at a time.