I spent 53 years of my life doing chemistry. I was 17 (almost 18) when I chose chemistry as my major and 71 when I retired from being a professor doing teaching and research and a scientific editor of an American Chemical Society journal. My brain is molded like that of a scientist, I can't help it by now.
So, because you asked, I will connect the dots, but I warn you, it will be in a rather dry, primitive and matter-of-factly manner, no poetic or artistic connotations (or psychological claptrap, well maybe a little bit).
The common feature I dare to offer between the leopard and Bix is rather simplistic, they both went up into a rarified atmosphere. It was cold, lonely, and perilous, and they died trying to go where no one had gone before.
I hasten to add that I do not really believe what I wrote. I just made the obvious comparison between Bix and the leopard. Bix did not try to reach that elusive note cited by Dorothy Parker in her novel Young Man With A Horn about Rick Martin, a pseudo Bix musician. Bix died, not out of frustration, but of physical addiction to alcohol and the consequent weakening of his overall health.
Albert