LOVE LIONS ALIVE by Andi Rive

RESPECT FOR NATACHA I cannot even imagine what Nachi used to see, feel and hear during her life in a travel crate in the circus. What did the people who handled her, who passed her from one tourist to the next; minute after minute after minute, smell like? Where they hot and sweaty? Perfumed? Did they smell of other animals, hotdogs and cotton candy? What does human supremacy smell like? Did they croon to her in soft loving voices or ignore her whilst loudly chatting to each other? What did she hear when they were raising the Big Top or when they had packed up, ready to drive to the next circus location? Men shouting, workers whistling, poles clattering, canvas flapping, metal rattling? I can guess that she saw new sights all of the time. But wait, did she, or was her crate inside a vehicle whilst they traveled? When the circus decamped, was her cage set between canvas walls in an alleyway of guy ropes? Did all the different tourist hands, eyes and faces blur into

5 YEARS WITH MELA (Lockdown Day 4) “Mela Bella baby lion” I call and wait a few seconds as I do not know where she is in her enclosure. A bush begins to shake and I look towards it as she bursts out of the leaves running to me. She is licking her lips and mewling in short whao whao moans. Mela was born on the 29th March 2015. It was a Sunday and I was in Johannesburg having my broken arm attended to (That is another whole story involving a fractured cheek and other miscellaneous breaks). Taiga phoned me in the morning exclaiming that there was a cub in Ariel’s enclosure. I was concussed and struggled to compute this as there was no way that there could be a cub in Arial’s enclosure, “what?” I asked “there is a cub in Ariel’s enclosure, it is alone, it is just sniffling around in the grass. Thulani called me to come and see it, I had heard what I thought was a cub screaming early this morning but theen I just thought it was impossible, what must I do?” “There can’t be a c