The lion, prideful but without a pride, roamed in search of a cave to hide. Hunters were coming to lay him down, hunters were coming with crazy sound. They smashed the branches and snapped twigs; rolled over homes under the plain, and knocked nature about. The lion was lucky in his cool brown and padded claws. He slipped through the trees undetected, hatred reflected in his eyes for all his murdered and kidnapped felines. Into himself he retreated, sprawling out on the dirt, alone, he felt good for a moment. It had been so long that there in the cave, he thought he had dreamed it.

When a perky little cat, Roberta, Bob for short, came trotting by. She heard the loud sigh of an angry lion inside. “Go away small one why have you come,” he roared “can’t you see that with all of you I am done!” She perked up her whiskers and sat lightly on her tail staring up into the jaws of hell. “Out I said, or I’ll surely kill you dead.”

Un-phased, she laid in the shade of a tree trunk across the way and went to sleep. There she stayed. Every day. Listening to the lion storm, bringing warm mice for him to nibble on, leading the monkeys away whenever they tried to bother, singing sweet meows whenever he started to holler.

Until finally one day long after, he cried to the cat “Why? Surely you know the real world is not this kind.”

“We are the same,” she said.

“I am a lion,”  he growled.

“You are a cat albeit a very big one. I am black and spotted, you are tan. You are alone and in pain. I remember once when I was in needing, someone came with love, feeding me bits of kindness. We may not look it, but we are the same. And if we don’t take care of each other who will,…” she began to trail off, and slowly got up to walk away “…the hunter?”

Into the brush she went without a word more.

The lion, so used to her love and affection, followed behind; and thought, in time, I will learn how to be the same.