Don't give in to casual habits or tics: This isn't the time or place for a twitch of the whisker or flick of the tail.

Be statue-still and stay focused for the next half hour, as if your life depended on it — like Julie's does.

Can you who rest on your haunches at the top of the food chain do it for even 10 minutes? Five? For as long as it takes you to read this story and peruse the slide show? Breathless patience and stealth: These are only two of the countless requirements of being a successful predator in the wild.

Crouched in the knee-high brown grass so low that John Varty can barely pick her out even though he knows right where she is, the captive-born Julie is demonstrating her "wild" skills like the 4-year-old pro she is, having been taught all aspects of the hunt, time and again, during hundreds of outings much like this one.

The hunt unofficially started around 7:45 a.m., with Julie elevating herself to a high point by perching on the roof of the Land Rover. She spent long minutes basking in the sun, languidly fluffing her ruff.

A mature cat who exudes dignity and demands respect, Julie is not above kitten-like antics. Yesterday, she managed to wedge her head between the vehicle's aerial and its shattered windshield. This morning, she rolled onto her back with legs in the air and promptly lost her balance, falling from the dented roof onto the dented hood with a great thud.

From, "I meant to do that," her look changes to, "RED ALERT." She juts her chin forward and surveys the landscape with tight, snappy movements, detecting and assessing a herd of five wildebeest in the distance.