Do You Need a Leopard in Your Life?

There are a great many people in the world who could use a leopard.

Have you ever looked at someone and thought, “That person could use a leopard?” I’m sure you have; it’s a fairly common experience. You’re talking with a co-worker over lunch, or sitting through a meeting with your boss, or listening to some stranger’s political rant and you think, “What this person needs is a good leopard to set him straight. I shall procure one for him at the earliest convenience.”

Or perhaps that’s just me.

Still, you must agree that many people would benefit from the presence of a leopard in their lives: something alive, active, and a little dangerous that doesn’t fit the mold they’ve created for themselves and forces them to question just what it is they are doing with their lives.

As you are no doubt aware, all this is in reference to that screwiest of screwball comedies, Bringing Up Baby, staring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

(You’ve seen the film, of course. If not, why would you deprive yourself the joy of so doing for as long as it would take to finish this article? Go watch it and come back: you’ll thank me for it.)

In case you need a recap, the film features Mr. Grant as a milquetoast scientist too wrapped up in his career to have a life and Miss Hepburn as an insane socialite who becomes fixated on him after a few chance encounters. Then she acquires a pet leopard with a taste for music and dogs (“I don’t know if that means he eats dogs or is fond of them”) and enlists him to help her take it down to her aunt’s farm. In the process, she turns his boring, dead-end life inside out.

Poor Grant just wants to get back to his normal routine, with his frigid fiancée and dry career. But, as time goes on, not only does he slowly start to enjoy himself, but the experience also provides a much needed injection of energy and manliness. He not only has a better time, but becomes better for the time. After all, one almost can’t help but grow more assertive when trying to wrangle a wild, untamable creature that’s out for your blood (not to mention the leopard).

The two characters couldn't be more polar opposite—and therefore, perfectly paired for this comedy.

Grant, when we first meet him, is a thoroughly conventional man, bound up in his work, engaged to a modern working woman who is so dedicated to her own career and his that she insists they won’t have any children lest they distract from the job. He seeks to follow the script that life has given him at every turn, reciting the correct polite phrases at the correct time, following the correct path of a distinguished career followed by marriage to the correct woman.

Then Hepburn suddenly comes in and, to his consternation, she doesn’t follow the rules at all. They meet on the 18^th fairway, where she helps herself to his ball, cheerfully talking over his attempts to explain, then when she’s finally convinced its his ball shrugs it off with “it’s only a game.” Things do not improve from there.

The movie reminds us of the importance of living a life filled with joy.

Hepburn hasn’t the least concern for convention. She’s happy to walk up and talk to anyone, to help herself to any errant golf balls (or cars) she happens to find, and she cheerfully shrugs off concerns of money or prestige. She thinks nothing of standing in the middle of a stranger’s yard and singing to the leopard on their roof, because, well, it’s her leopard, and she has to get him down, and to get him down she has to sing.

That said, though careless of the rules of convention, she does keep to more important rules. She’s frightfully sweet, is fully in favor of marriage, and though she may swipe a car from mistake or convenience she’ll make sure to send it back when she’s done with it. She is, in fact, rather like Chesterton’s Innocence Smith: she can break the conventions because she keeps the commandments.

It is just this quality that attracts him to her; the fact that she is a breath of fresh air from the stifling life he’s been living. She enjoys life and doesn’t care for what doesn’t matter.

Does your Catholic faith help you enjoy life more? Or does it cause you curl up into a hard little shell?

I think a lot of Catholics these days, pressed by enemies on all sides, have a tendency to curl up into hard little shells, clinging tight to the faith and fearful to look up at anything else. This is understandable, but unfortunate. In the first place, religion is meant to transform our life, not to consume it.

Even those who dedicate their lives wholly to God’s service (such as monks) often serve Him through scholarship and beer brewing. In our understandable fear of the enemies who surround us, we’re liable to forget that Christians are meant to be joyful, and that we are promised we can “drink poison without taking harm” and “pick up serpents and scorpions without hurt.”

In a word, Christians are meant to enjoy life: not to shelter from it or to plod along on the ‘correct’ path. We must keep the commandments, of course, but doing so is precisely what allows us to safely dispense with the conventions. God did not put us on this world merely to go along or get along. He has surrounded us with wonders and joys, and it only seems good manners to appreciate them.

Even better, to enjoy life and embrace it wholeheartedly, yet unselfishly is very attractive. After all, who wouldn’t want to have a leopard?