Asprin, Robert Lynn – Catwoman – Tiger Hunt (With Lynn Abbey)

The globes were eyes—artificial eyes glued into the preserved head of a half-grown Siberian tiger.

Selina knew it was a Siberian tiger thanks to the Wilderness Warriors, whose quarterly newsletter was the only piece of mail she looked forward to and read over and over until she’d committed it to memory. She learned things about the great cats she’d never imagined as a little girl, but mostly she learned that her favorite predators were doomed. Their habitats were vanishing. They could not distinguish between prey that belonged to no one and prey that belonged to a local farmer or herdsman. But, worst of all, they were ravaged by poachers—greedy treasure-hunters to whom the words endangered species meant higher profit.

She knew that Eddie Lobb could not have acquired the head—which she slowly realized was the lid of a box—in an honest way. Traffic in endangered animals—alive, stuffed, or in pieces—was illegal. It wasn’t the illegality that got to Catwoman, though. It was the immorality. Eddie Lobb loved tigers, but he didn’t love them freely. Unsatisfied with pictures or statues, he craved the tiger itself. He didn’t seem to mind that the tiger had to die first, and that made him as sin-heavy as the poacher who laid the trap and pulled the trigger.

Selina understood the temptation. She had to touch the head a second time. She shuddered when the stiff, coarse fur brushed her exposed fingertips. The head was bigger than her nameless gray kitten, but otherwise the faces were the same. No wonder Rose had freaked out in the mission kitchen.