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I can't remember him not being there. In the morning, in the evening and long into the night, he stood, bathing in his own radiant brilliance that only I saw.

As I watched him, I absorbed every awkward nuance of his actions. In the mornings, he would feel his way around as it overcome by the indiscriminate harshness of the morning light, pausing only to yawn and stretch. His torso would bow outwards, causing the thin white fur on his chest to ripple in the sunlight and briefly (as I noticed in my more voracious moods) exposing the band of his underpants from beneath the veil of his innocent flannel pyjamas.

He would pull on a shirt, seemingly at random, and wander, still groggy and slightly hunched over, out of the room to greet the day.

For nearly two years, I observed his ritual from the block across the road, my bedroom window a direct portal into his for those few moments of escapist bliss which melted my heart. And for nearly two years, while I saw so much of the young leopard, I never heard him speak, never smelled his neck affectionately nor ran a loving hand through his fur. I had seen him, yes, but I'd never even shared a room with him.

Every day, I vowed to take action - to go over and run into him as if by chance. Most mornings saw an hour pass before calling off my plans in fear or anxiety, and of those that remained a chance encounter (despite my best attempts) never resulted, leaving me to sheepishly return to my home and prepare for my daily duties.

***

It began one morning in early June. I would stir from sleep early in the day to some paranoid feeling of a voyeur targeting me with judging eyes. I would shrug the absurd feeling off my mind, pointlessly rubbing my eyes as if to improve my perception of the world.

Sometimes it would sadden me when, of a morning, I would stumble into the warmth of the morning sun as it pound into my window. The gentle heat ran in and out of the fur on my arms and chest, giving it tangible lightness. But as I felt that heat sweep through me, I sorely missed the visual sensation that others might experience along with it. Instead, what stretched out in front of me was what was referred to by others as a "blackness" - an ever-changing sea of shifting shapes whose colour and brightness I am in no authority to discern. They may well be dark, as many suggest, but they are just as probably light as the fur on my back, as the sun I missed in the morning, as the heaven I would never see.

Usually I was able to put these thoughts aside and continue freely through the day without it further plaguing my mind. On others, the thought would recur in my head, my disability constantly taunting me, suggesting the possibility of something greater than what I was already capable of experiencing. On one such day, I wondered if people that could see thought the same thing - if there was some extrasensory stimulus privy to some kind of higher, hidden being that coexists with us on this lonely planet. Such metaphysical rumination was unnecessary, and I progressed with my plans for the day.

On this particular morning, I had an appointment with a University Research Centre who were interested in my blindness. I wondered what they wanted from me - would they tie me to a chair, and forcibly inject some sort of computer chip into my eye? Would they put some chemical in me which magically rectified my vision? Would they simply sit and ask questions?

As I made my way down the busy street, the thought crossed my mind that not seeing might be preferable to experiencing the world in full colour. After all, lacking eyesight forced me to sharpen all of my other senses. Pushing through the crowd, I heard and smelt things that would be alien to others. Businessmen discussing their latest affairs, a subtle semi-sweet scent plastered on a lawyer's chest to assert dominance, a lady ineptly stumbling down the other side of the street in high heels, an elderly female who had failed to bathe for the better part of a month. I noticed these things where others simply ignored them or failed to take them on board, and that was an invaluable trait to me.

I arrived at the Research Centre and was quickly hustled into a cold room and sat in a chair before being left alone with only the buzz of a fluorescent light for company. The rapid echoes of even the smallest sounds began to agitate me, but also served to alert me to the minuteness of the room. It wasn't long after I was abandoned that a male walked in - I could tell by his scent - and sat lightly on a metal chair. He took in a deep breath which violated the silence of the room and revealed his species: he was a tiger, but the shallowness of his breathing suggested he was young and weak. He took a pen to the clipboard in his hand as he slowly exhaled before freezing, hastily snatching the exhaled air back into his lungs before dashing out of the room. The door slammed behind him and I was left alone again with the humming light.

***

Most days passed with little extra significance to me. I would pull on the absurd uniform of the medical scientist, attempt to rectify the hair on my head to something resembling professionalism, and proceeded to the university. When I had moved to the mostly empty town following the promise of a position researching artificial vision, I hardly thought I would be as isolated as I became. It was a university town, and PhDs fresh from their research would fill the streets, echoing my own hunger for information - in short, I expected more like-minded company than I found.

I arrived at the centre after a brief and uneventful walk, exchanged pleasantries with my colleagues and prepared for the day's first task: an interview with a male leopard, twenty-four, congenital blindness care of optical nerve lesions possibly caused by birth asphyxia. Not terribly unique or interesting unless the specificities of the condition

Taking the clipboard, I wandered down the lonely hall to the interview room, observing myself in the reflective walls. My barely tamed orange and black fur puffed awkwardly in all directions. A sudden self-consciousness seized me as a looked up at the door to the interview room. Without a second thought, I lazily threw the door open and meandered inside before collapsing on the spare chair opposite the interviewee. I took a breath to greet the leopard, and let my gaze rise to examine the subject.

My heart froze as my eyes locked on to him - the hair, the face, the fur patterns, the body. Dropping the clipboard, I leapt out of the chair and scrambled to the door, slamming it behind me and leaning against it. This desperate move did nothing for my embarrassment, which flared up in the knowledge that I'd have to explain myself. Anxiously, I let the door open and took a breath as I entered the room.