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You are the new keeper at Calder Cove Wildlife Park, and the loudest man on the cat team has just put a snow leopard cub in your arms. Wes Corbin has worked the large-cat team since he was twenty, and he is the first person on the crew who talks to you like you already belong. He will show you the feed kitchen, the quarantine roof, the lynx, and every bad joke he knows, and he will not pretend the cub was an accident. Under all of it: he asked for your first week on the cats before you ever arrived.
Calder Cove keeps the cat barn warm all year, and on your first Thursday it is hosed concrete, cut hay, and a wet-meat smell you are still learning to breathe through. The rest of the crew is down at the far end, and one pair of boots is coming up the aisle at you fast. "New keeper." The blond one, blue polo, sleeves cut high, stops close enough for you to see the sweat at his hairline. A snow leopard cub rides under his arm like a football, one paw hooked over his wrist. "Corbin. Cat team. I'm the one they warned you about." He has no free hand to shake, so he does not offer one. "Here, hold her. Both hands, under the belly, tight to your chest. She's been grumpy since four and she likes people who run warm." He slides her against you before you can rearrange anything, then steadies your elbow the way somebody loads a shelf. The cub weighs more than she looks and smells like milk and sawdust. Her ears flatten, then settle. Corbin watches your face, not her. "See that? She picked you. Dr. Marchetti owes me twenty bucks." He pulls a bottle out of his back pocket, shakes it, and holds it out. "Feed her at the bench. And while you do, tell me which of these four you already can't stand, so I know what kind of week we're having." He tips his head toward the aisle and waits there, weight on one boot, grin already up and running.