Name: The Beast of Bodmin Moor; on her travels this has most often been shortened either to Beast (which she doesn't like) or Boddy. As she has spoken with exotic cats from all over the world, during her visits to the zoos of the South West, she is aware of the Bodhi Tree, a part of Buddhist mythology. Therefore she adopted the name Bodhi, which introduces nice connotations for the phoneme 'Boddy'.
Gender: Female
Age: Heading into middle age
Tribe: Jellicle, when she has decided which tribe is least likely to make demands of her in return for her staying on their turf
Tribe Position: Awaiting your decision
Family: No kittens, and doesn't know who or where her parents are. It's possible she may have family in zoos somewhere, but that isn't what she's looking for. She considers big cats generally as family, and when she's in a particularly lonely state of mind, domestic cats will do just as well.
Appearance: A standard black panther
Human Appearance: None
Personality: Thoughtful and considered, with an undercurrent of anger/fear/sadness that she can't quite explain, but likely comes from the fact that she doesn't remember ever being with her mother. Her earliest memory is of being wrapped in a white towel and being bottle-fed by a zoo attendant. Loves art - which for cats, often comes in the form of dance, moreso for the fact that she, as a big cat, often can't risk singing, which would likely sound like a roar to any local humans and bring unwelcome attention from them. Keeps herself busy by travelling from one zoo to another, talking with the big cats there and passing messages between them. She has 'reunited' a few offspring and parents/grandparents, siblings, etc. this way. Doing this has deep significance to her, since she doesn't remember any of her own family and doesn't wish that kind of loneliness on anybody. As a happy side-effect, it means that she gets to talk to exotic cats who have all sorts of fascinating customs that black panthers don't. She lives to learn that stuff, in fact!
Faults: Her size, compared with her distaste for drama. In the past, some domestic cats have tried to use her weight to help get their own way. She doesn't want this, and has ended up deserting clans of cats in the past for this reason. This means she can be a bit guarded with domestic cats until she is sure she can trust them. She can be self-centered (because she often has nobody else to look after but herself, while travelling between zoos), and when she first meets other cats after a period of sustained solitude, can be pent-up with the need to talk and dance (which can be unnerving for the more skittish cats).
Describing word: Determined.
History: To the best of her knowledge, she began life in Bristol Zoo. Perhaps her mother died, perhaps she rejected Bodhi, perhaps she was considered too precious as a rare black panther to be left to an inexperienced mum, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Bodhi doesn't know.
She escaped the zoo as a young adult; a vervet monkey from one of the other enclosures tended to take strolls of a night, and she struck up a friendship with him. She was frustrated with her life in a cage, and so she talked him into loosening the nuts and screws so that she could join him on his travels. He unscrewed them as asked, until a panel of her cage came loose. She stepped to freedom and enjoyed a night wandering with her simian friend among the other enclosures. And what sights she saw!
She watched the lemurs springing from tree to tree, listened to the twittering bats; she scented the stripey okapi. She peered into the red panda enclosure, found herself face to face with the pygmy hippo and her baby... And then she met her first other big cat! A lioness! But the night was giving way to dawn by then and she had to return to her cage. The vervet screwed the panel back in place and promised to let her out again soon.
Their sorties became a regular thing. The monkey would sit on her back and she would wander around all over the zoo. But the lionesses and their thin-maned male were her favourites, and often the pride and the lone panther would talk the night away. It was they who turned her on to the fact of different cultures. They were so different from her in ways she found quite fascinating. They showed her dances - and she began to wonder what dances she should be showing them. These thoughts really grew legs, however, when they told her that they had family in other manageries. If there were other lions otherplace, were there other black panthers too? She wondered.
As she had once been frustrated with her metal bars, she had begun to feel similarly antsy about the walls of the zoo. Now she was truly aware of the world beyond it, she knew there was only one way she could go.
She left, with nothing but an intrepid spirit in her heart and a message from the eldest lioness for two male twins to whom she had once given birth: "I love you, and I'm so so sorry."
To explain the entirety of the panther's adventures leaving Bristol, and her initial encounters with humans, would be time-consuming and detract from the essence of this back-story. Suffice to say that she learned fairly quickly (though not fast enough to avoid detection completely), that humans could pass messages between themselves FAST, so best avoid them entirely.
She visited Longleat, Newquay Zoo and Exmoor Zoo, and by good chance found the twins. She gave them their mother's message, and then spent a spontaneous night listening to their own heartfelt outpourings. They communicated their forgiveness to her, and she returned to Bristol Zoo to deliver it to its recipient. But not before she met with a tiger.
He had much to talk with her about. He suspected he had a cub, but was not entirely sure. The panther tentatively asked him to show her some of his culture before she went, and he was happy to demonstrate a tiger dance. Beautiful, sensuous and invested with a potent power, she fell in love with it. Paid in this manner, she left to find his kin.
At Exmoor Zoo she found a tiger, but this was not a mother. She was, however, fascinated by the panther's adventure and was able to tell her that a black panther resided in this very zoo. Excited beyond measure, the panther went in the direction the tigress told her.
The panther was depressed; not severely so, for his keepers had gone to great lengths to make his enclosure a stimulating place, but there was a certain resigned quality to the way he behaved. He was, however, able to tell her that she was already gaining quite the reputation. A giant black cat had been seen on Bodmin Moor, he told her; humans kept on talking about it in his presence, so he knew all about it. Her name among the humans, he told her, was The Beast of Bodmin Moor.
She didn't like this; it made her sound like a monster. He saw her shocked into silence but had little capacity for sympathy. He did, however, tell her of a regular leopard in another enclosure.
She went to see her... and fell in love. Or better to say, she fell in love with the idea, the power of this cat that was a spotted version of her, but for a long time afterwards she believed that she was infatuated with this cat. The leopardess was emotionally stable enough to take this in stride, and on a succession of nights taught our black panther many things, including leopard dances.
The panther's life was complete - especially when the leopardess told her about the local religion of her native Sri Lanka - Buddhism, which included a token known as the Bodhi Tree. The panther quickly adopted this as her name.
After this, her adventures only expanded, and became more refined. She made a point of keeping out of sight of the humans; she travelled further and passed on multiple messages, every message requiring a reply. She was 'paid' in company and culture, and developed an encyclopedic knowledge of who lived in which zoo, menagerie and private collection.
Gangs of domestic/feral cats became a part of her life when she started spending time in cities. She needed somewhere to hide during the day, not to mention help finding food. They helped, and sometimes they tried to turn her to their own use, and she became clever about how she presented her vulnerability during these times.
At the time Bodhi is entering this forum's storyline, she is making a trek to London Zoo.
RP Sample: This was the moment of truth. Several of these Jellicles had seen her now, to the point that she could no longer rely on the adult queens and toms scolding the kittens for having over-active imaginations. They were beginning to corroborate one-anothers' stories.
But Bodhi was not afraid, only mildly nervous. She often coaxed the situation to this level with domestic gangs, and now was the time to come out of the shadows that had served as her companions and make some new ones! Slowly, smoothly, she stepped into the moonlight. Jellicles scattered, raised the fur on their tails, hissed and stared, but she would prove that she meant no harm.
She reached the dead-center of the dump and stood slowly up, making eye contact with one of the premier queens as she did. Her hind legs, tightly coiled, slowly lifted her up until she stood in a balanced pose.
And then she danced. Slow and fluid with no sudden moves, with a theme of moving her front paws together as if to say, "I'm hiding something, but I want to show it to you", "I have a secret", and "I want to open up to you, but I will have to be cautious". The space was big enough that she did not have to keep her limbs and tail particularly close, so she allowed her leopard-dance to be expressive. She made eye contact with several of the cats, the older ones more so than the young, to make an initial connection. To invite them to join in if they wanted - that would be the best possible result of this dance, the ideal signal of acceptance.
She finished with a series of three, sweeping moves. Each time she turned a third of a circle and looked at a senior or dominant cat, making sure they knew that the lines of communication were open - on her side, at least. One... she looked at a serious-looking grey tom. Two... she eyed an elderly male with a loose pelt and a mane. Three... she saw a prim, practical-looking queen.
With all of this done, she sat back down again to wait for the leaders to respond to her.
Comments: I think I've included everything.