Snow leopard
A pale-coated cat of high mountains — a rare, almost unseen presence in country that does not forgive.
A snow leopard in a dream is the dream's image of a rare, almost unseen presence in country that does not forgive. The cat lives where the air is thin and the human is not at home; sightings are something herders tell their grandchildren about. The dream brings the snow leopard when something in your life — a withdrawn person, a quiet excellence, an unusual discipline — is operating in conditions most people will not enter, and is therefore almost mythological to the people in the valley. A snow leopard glimpsed on the rocks is the dream marking the brief gift of the sighting. A snow leopard's tracks found in fresh snow with no animal in sight is the dream noting that the presence is being inferred, and the proof is the trace, not the body.