The Monuca

House Marten. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Steinmarder_%28cropped%29.jpg

Wildcat. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Felis_silvestris_Kocka_divok%C3%A1_zoo_cropped.jpg

Daughter of a house marten and a wildcat, it is born in spring every eleven years and has fur of various colors: the head is white, the body is red, blue and black, and the tail is purple. She is fierce and stubborn and runs away as soon as she is born before she can open her eyes and get the colors of her fur. When she can see , she returns to the cave, kills her mother, sucks all her blood and plucks out her eyes. Afterward, it escapes again to the shore of a river, where it curls up until it gets its multicolored appearance.

It feeds on grasshoppers and the blood it sucks from small lambs and young. Her father chases her from the time she meets her dead mother but does not catch up with her until she is five years old when she becomes fat and heavy and can no longer run away by climbing the tallest trees. Once the bobcat catches up with her, he kills her. Then he goes back to the cave where his mother died and dies of grief.

 

Sources:

Mercedes Cano Herrera. (2007). Entre anjanas y duendes : mitología tradicional ibérica. Castilla Ediciones.