The How and Why Library/Wild Animals/Section II
II. Pet Pussy and King Lion
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Men have known lions longer than they have bears. They have lived right next door to lions for thousands of years, but they never called a lion "brother." They never felt as friendly as that toward this fierce, proud beast. He has always been King of the dry plains of Africa and the hot jungle of India. In the menagerie and zoo he keeps everyone at a distance, and seems to feel very much above all the other animals, and even men. If he could understand that he has a cousin so small, so tame, and so playful that little children make a pet of him, he might just roar with rage and shame
The lion is only a very big wild cat. Your pet kitten is like him in more ways than you imagine. In fact, pussy is a live and lively book on lions. Live books are better than printed ones, and much more interesting Pussy walks and runs and crouches and springs exactly as a lion does. She watches a mouse hole and springs on her prey as a lion does, too. Turn her on her back and look at her paws. There are five toes on her front paws, one of them a sort of thumb, but only four toes on her hind paws. Did you know that? On each toe is a little curved toe-nail, as sharp as a little sickle. Pussy keeps her claws inside her pretty, soft fur mittens most of the time. But she can push them out as quick as a wink, pull them back again and scratch exactly like a lion. Under the toes and the balls of the feet are soft, naked cushions, so pussy makes no sound when she walks. All the wild cats—the lions, tigers and leopards, the jaguars, panthers and lynxes have feet just like the house cat's.
Now look at pussy's head. She has upright, outward-turning ears. She must hear well because she hunts at night. On each side of her mouth are long stiff hairs. These are feelers to keep her from putting her head into a smaller hole than her body can go through. Her eyes are the strangest of all. There are windows, or pupils, in them, for letting the light in, as there are in your eyes. In the dark these windows are big and round, so they shine like little yellow moons. But in the daytime, or in a lamp-lighted room, those pupils close to a narrow, up-and-down slit to keep the light out Pussy can see in the dark so well because she can open her eye-windows so wide. Some of the lesser wild cats shut the pupils of their eyesto slits, but the lion, tiger and leopard draw their pupils up into little round holes. In that one thing the lion is more like boys and girls than pet kittens.
Put your finger in pussy's mouth. What sharp teeth she has. They pierce like the points of carpet tacks. When she licks your hand her tongue feels like a file. A lion's teeth are like daggers, and his tongue is so rough he can scrape bones clean with it. Lions lap water with their tongues, too. Pussy doesn't like to get her feet wet, and lions just hate water, except to drink. That is queer, for many of the wild cats love water. The tigers of India swim across small arms of the sea. They haunt river banks and swamps, wade in up to their necks to drink, wallow in the mud, then wash off and roll in the sand. This love of water gets them into trouble with crocodiles. The jaguar, or South American tiger, likes turtles and catches them by swimming.
All the wild cats wash their faces with their paws. Perhaps you have wondered why your big cat likes to go to a quiet, shady place and sleep a good deal in the daytime, and then prowl about and make dreadful noises at night. She learned that habit thousands of years ago when all cats were wild, and she never quite gets over it, no matter how tame she seems. She will try to hide her babies, too, On farms, where there are fine hiding places, mother cats will make a den under the barn floor, in the haymow, or in a hollow log up in the woods. If you try to follow her to find her kittens she will mislead you in the cleverest way. The mother lion carries her kittens by taking the loose skin at the back of the neck between her teeth, just as the house cat does.
The lion makes his den in a rocky cave hidden by bushes, on the edge of a wide sandy plain where many antelopes, deer, zebra and other grazing animals roam. In one thing he is better than the house cat. When he is about three or four years old, and has a short, fine silky mane, of which he is as proud as big brother is of his downy mustache, the lion picks out a mate to go to housekeeping. These two stay together just as human papas and mamas do, all their lives, and they sometimes live to be fifty years of age. When they find a house that suits them they don't like to move. You know tame cats like places better than they do people, and often refuse to go with the most loving little mistress to a new home.
There's one thing that lions can't do that cats can. They can't climb trees. But tigers, leopards, panthers and all the other big,wild cats are great climbers, so it must be that lions have lived so long where there are few trees that they just forgot how to climb, The lion has forgotten to have stripes, or spots, too. His coat is of a uniform yellowish-brown, the color of sand and dry grass. All the other wild cats, and many tame ones, have beautiful markings. The tiger is banded in black and reddish fawn. The leopard is covered with big black polka dots on a golden fawn ground. The jaguar, or South American tiger is dot-in-a-ring spotted. But here is a curious thing. Although the grown up lion hasn't a sign of a spot or stripe about him, lion cubs often show faint markings that disappear as they grow older.
Scientists tell us that the young of many animals show, in some such way, how their ancestors looked ages and ages ago. Once, perhaps, there were no lions, as we see them today, only big striped and spotted cats that slowly changed into lions because of the open plains they had to hunt on. In the dancing sunspots and shadows of the leafy jungles, and in the foliage of thick trees, the tiger and leopard are safely hidden, but on level, treeless, brown plains they could be seen a long way off. But, while he had to paint out his spots and stripes, the African lion grew a beautiful dark mane that makes his head appear much larger, fiercer and nobler than that of any other cat. He grew a tuft of hair and a horny cone on the tip of his tail to lash himself into a rage. And he grew a terrifying roar, too!
Maybe you have heard a big African lion roar in a zoo. You can hear him a mile. That roar starts all the other animals. The tiger screams, the jaguar cries piouw! something like pussy's meouw. The bear " 'ist growls," the buffaloes bellow, the elephants trumpet. All the fierce, fighting animals are thrown into a rage by that roar, and the timid ones tremble with fear. Some of them run, but others seem unable to move.
Maybe that is why the lion roars when he is on the hunt—to paralyze his prey with fear. He lies on the bank of a stream waiting, as pussy waits at a mouse hole, for some timid antelope, whose only safety is in his heels, to come down to drink. Then he springs with a roar. The way he roars in a zoo isn't anything to what he can do in the roaring line at home. He has several kinds of roars. Sometimes he moans like the wind in the tree tops. Sometimes he rumbles like faraway thunder. Sometimes he gets his neighbors to help him give a desert concert on a dark, stormy night. But it is worst of all when one party of lions meets another and they all roar ateach other for hours. You know what a dreadful noise cats can make when they quarrel on the back fence. Lions act the same way, only worse, and they can be heard miles and miles.
Ostriches must admire the lion's roar, for they seem to try to imitate it. African travellers say they do it very well, too. Hunters can be sure of one thing. A roar at night means a lion; a roar in the daytime an ostrich.
Did you ever see a cat miss catching a mouse? She looks ashamed of herself. She peeps around to see if any one noticed her failure, and slinks away as if she wanted to forget it. Lions do the same. And they do not attack elephants and other big, thick skinned, tusked animals that fight back. Nor do they attack men, unless they are wounded or driven into a corner, or sometimes when the man is asleep and helpless and the lion very hungry. Some African travellers say that if a man meets a lion, all he has to do is to stand still and look him square in the eyes and Mr. Lion will back away, then turn tail and run. I wouldn't like to put that to the test, would you? But a lion is used to seeing animals run from him in fear. It might puzzle him to see a man stand still and stare at him. Wild animals are a good deal like human beings in that. They are afraid of what they don't understand.
Travellers say the lion isn't nearly as brave as the tiger, nor as noble as he looks. He slinks along through tall grass, or behind bushes with his head hanging below his shoulders. He never fights any animal that can defend itself unless he is forced to do so. The only time he shows great courage is in defending his mate and cubs, and then the lioness is fiercer than the lion. In captivity, of course, he is savage. He thinks of himself as in a trap, very likely, and that every man who comes near him wants to kill him. That makes him very dangerous.
How do you suppose this big, bearded wild cat is ever tamed so far that he lets his trainer use him for a pillow, drive him to a cart, play see-saw with him, wrestle with him, and jump through a hoop at a word of command?
The training of a lion is simple. He has to be made to understand two things. One is that his trainer is his friend and means to use him well. The other is that the man is master. The trainer begins by going up near the bars, talking to the lion kindly, and throwing him some meat. It isn't long before the lion learns to know and to watch for the man who feeds him. Next the trainer,while talking, puts a stout stick between the bars. With a terrible roar the lion springs on the stick and crushes it into splinters. But the trainer keeps right on putting sticks between the bars, talking kindly to the lion and feeding him. After a few weeks the lion pays no attention to the stick, or he smells it and walks away. Finally he lets the trainer touch him with it, and stroke his back as he eats.
It is several months before the trainer tries going into the cage. He takes the stick with him and a stout chair. He sits down and pretends to read a newspaper. The lion crouches back in a corner and growls. If he should spring the trainer has the chair up, legs out, before his face, and Mr. Lion gets a bumped head and a blow on the nose—his tenderest spot. Very slowly he learns to trust his master and to fear him, too. Sometimes a lion seems to grow fond of his trainer.
When petted he will purr as if he had a whole swarm of bees in his throat. But trainers never forget that the tamest lion is always dangerous. He is sly and treacherous, too. Without an instant's warning he may forget all his lessons and turn on his best friend. So the trainer watches and watches, never quite trusting even a lion that he has brought up from a cub.
Lion cubs are the cunningest babies. They really look and act more like puppies than kittens. They are as fat and clumsy and woolly as Newfoundland puppies. In Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, a keeper takes a family of three or four lion kittens out onto a grass plot for a romp. Crowds and crowds of people watch them tumble over each other. They are not born blind as tame kittens are, but they are just as helpless, and for a long time cannot even lap milk from a saucer. Sometimes the mother lion, soured on the world by being shut in a cage, won't have anything to do with her babies. They die unless some other animal with milk can be found to nurse them. The very best foster mother for lion kittens is—not a cat, but a dog. A shepherd or collie dog is the best, for she is trained to care for sheep. She nurses them, fondles them and seems as proud of them as a mother. But in a few months they grow so big and rough that she looks at them in wonder and alarm, as a hen looks at a duckling she has hatched to take to the water. She must think the fairies have changed these babies in their cradles, for they are none of hers! And by the time they are old enough to be weaned they are too much for doggie.