The title, Latin for bobcat, tells us who is speaking: a wild cat waking in a rocky shelter, parched and hunting for a drink. The poem stays inside the animal's senses. A hot gaze at the den's mouth might be the sun, or it might be the mother with a new "chew-toy," and the speaker can't quite tell which. Dreams slink off behind the rocks "where it's always night."
From there the search begins. Water has no scent, so the cat follows sound and sight instead. Streams become living things, with a throat, a pulsing vein, a purr, and a trembling surface like "the loveliest of pelts." Still water on the mountaintop is harder, because it is silent and can't be ambushed. The cat treats water almost like prey.
The mood is alert, sensual, and quietly urgent. The final image, whiskers buzzing with daylight and the cat gusting through leaves toward a "fierce glint," makes thirst feel like a form of hunting.