# Kitten-like



## Padmja (Apr 9, 2013)

Before I moved to India, I lived in South Africa. So one year we decided to drive up to Zimbabwe. Our first stop was a small Ostrich farm/ wildlife reserve. It had taken us almost 6 hours longer than we'd expected, at the SA-Zim border, so we reached the place a little after sunset. We entered the dining space and saw a lioness just lounging on one of the table. You'd think she was stuffed but then she moved.
She was 13 months old, still a cub (even though she was the size of a St. Bernard). The owner told us that her mother had had been killed by some illegal poachers that had managed to sneak onto his property. He had hand reared her and she was mostly harmless to adults.
So later that night when we were going to the dining space for dinner, Kiara, the lioness, decided that it was time to play. We had little cottag like houses that we stayed in, instead of rooms and they were placed quite far apart, there was a dark little stone path that led to the dining and reception areas. The path also had rocks on either sides of it. 
My dad and I were walking to the dining space and we saw Kiara playing in the plants behind the rocks, we pt and left. My mother was behind us and didn't didn't notice her in the bushes. Next thing, we hear my mother scream. We rushed out to see what had happened and see my mom leaning again somthing (I don't quite remember what) and Kiara had her paws on my mom's shoulders and was her face against my mom's.
It was the most adorable thing ever.


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## LaurulFeatherCat (Sep 16, 2011)

Padmja, you saw what the lioness did as playful. I saw what the lioness did as aggressive. Please remember lions are not domestic cats who have lived with and socially evolved with humans over thousands of years. The lioness is still a wild animal, no matter who raised her, and was actually stalking and hunting your mother, not playfully playing: the lioness cannot help herself, these behaviors are part of her instincts. It is only because the lioness was raised by humans that she did not outright kill your mom; the lioness was never taught to dispatch game like her wild mother would have shown her, so the lioness ends her stalk-and-hunt instincts with the social gesture the humans taught her; jump up and look face to face with her stalking victum. Some time in the future, this lioness will hurt a human; not deliberately, but because her instincts will take over and she will BE a real lion in that moment.

I am sure it was wonderful and exciting to experience such an interaction with a lioness. I probably would have been thrilled as well to see the natural behavior up close and so benignly. But the scientist and behaviorist in me would have been scared and upset that the lioness had such a familiar relaxation amoung humans while also practicing her instinctual stalk and hunt behaviors. This is a very scary and potentially fatal game the park keepers are playing with this lioness. I fear for the lioness' future and hope she does not end up dead because she listened to her instincts, instincts she cannot hope to resist.

I have always been absolutely facinated about our domestic cats, where they evolved from and the exact way they obtained their behaviors. All those fuzzy, cute play-fighting kittens rolling on the floor are adorable and one of the most relaxing and fun things to watch/do anywhere. So is suddenly looking up and seeing your pet cat being a real, wild cat; maybe stalking a bird through the window or finding an invading mouse on the floor. Domestic cats give us a glimpse into the wild world; a fully safe, totally without risk look at the rule of nature and the wild life.


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