Christian the Lion Read online

  Christian still had a great deal of growing to do. At the moment his head and paws looked much too big for the rest of him — his little body needed to put on a growth spurt to catch up.

  Looking at the cub's huge helping of meat, Ace laughed. “I wouldn't mind eating that myself.”

  It did indeed look very tasty — it seemed far too much for such a small animal. But Christian always gobbled it down with relish.

  After spending the morning playing, Christian prepared to visit his garden for the first time -the place that was to be his daily exercise ground from now on. He sat patiently as John and Ace put the specially made Harrods collar and lead around his neck. Somehow they made him look very little.

  Remembering how scared the cub had been in the car when they drove home with him, they felt anxious about taking him into the outside world again. He'd been introduced to a lot of new places and people over the past forty-eight hours, and they were reluctant to cause him any more stress.

  “Maybe we should leave it until he's a bit bigger,” John suggested tentatively.

  “No,” Ace said firmly. “He needs his exercise. It would be cruel to keep him cooped up, and besides, we brought him here so that he could have a better life.”

  Christian pulled on his lead like an excited puppy. He agreed with Ace — he wanted to get outside!

  Leaving the shop, Christian padded happily onto the pavement. He ran ahead of John and Ace along the busy King's Road, straining at his lead. Pedestrians stopped and stared in amazement. Some came over to John, Ace and Christian, enthralled to see a real lion cub in London — they couldn't believe their eyes!

  Suddenly it seemed like Christian became aware of all the activity around him. All the loud noises — voices, traffic, car horns and sirens — alarmed him and he started to panic.

  Christian's eyes darted from side to side; then, without warning, he sat down in the middle of the pavement. Ace nearly tripped over him in surprise.

  Very worried, John asked, “What's going on?”

  “No idea,” Ace replied. “But if we take it slowly, I'm sure the little guy'll be all right in a minute.”

  Ace was wrong. Crowds of people started to gather around Christian, frightening him even more. Crouching down beside him, John gently stroked the cub's head and back. For the next few minutes the two men tried to calm Christian down, but they soon realized that he wouldn't be persuaded to walk along the pavement any more. His little body was shivering with terror, his eyes wide with shock.

  Finally, ignoring the crowd of onlookers, Ace scooped Christian up in his arms and, holding him close, quickly carried him the rest of the way to the church garden.

  After the drama of his first visit, Christian grew to love his daily exercise. The garden was beautiful, and he felt safe there. Surrounded by a high brick wall, it had a big grassy area and lots of trees and hedges to hide and play in. His favourite game was chasing a football: he would scamper after it energetically, bouncing and wrestling with it for hours. Now that Christian was getting so much fresh air and exercise in the garden; now that he had more space, more love and more food than ever before, he was growing bigger and bolder every day.

  Back at the shop, he became more confident, climbing happily up the basement stairs to see John and Ace whenever he felt like it. His favourite place of all was the front window of the shop. He would often stay there for hours, sometimes snoozing, sometimes gazing out at all the people bustling past as he had in his cage in Harrods.

  John and Ace's furniture shop had the rather unusual name of Sophistocat. Perhaps that was why, when they saw a big cat in the window, most passers-by and customers simply assumed that it must be a toy to match the name of the shop. Imagine their surprise when they saw Christian suddenly twitch his tail or gracefully climb down from his window seat.

  The little lion was gentle with everyone he met, and many of those who initially visited just to stare at him became firm friends. But the cub also had a cheeky sense of humour and liked to surprise people by creeping up behind them and making them jump.

  One wet afternoon Christian was sitting in his favourite spot, intrigued by the raindrops trickling down the outside of the window. It had been a quiet day in the shop, with very few visitors, so the lion cub turned his head when the doorbell jangled and a customer came in.

  Christian watched as John went over to speak to her. She was short and slim and wore a smart brown suit. Her hair was dark and flecked with grey.

  “Do you need any help, madam?” John asked politely.

  “Yes,” she answered carefully. “I'd like to take a closer look at that beautiful pine table over there,” and she pointed to the table in the centre of the shop floor. On her way over, she stumbled on something and John had to take her elbow to steady her. She bent over, picking up the object that had tripped her up, but when she saw what it was, she immediately dropped it with a loud shriek.

  The offending article was one of the huge bones that John and Ace gave Christian to chew on in between meals. It was a good way for him to exercise his jaws and keep his teeth sharp. It also had the added bonus of stopping him chewing on the furniture in the shop — which Ace had caught him doing several times!

  “What on earth is that?” the woman cried, once she'd recovered from her initial shock. “It looks big enough to feed a lion!”

  Christian saw his chance for a bit of fun. Slowly and carefully, he climbed down from his seat in the window. The soft pads of his feet made no sound as he slunk silently towards the customer.

  John picked up the bone and put it out of sight. “Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. I hope you're OK. Actually, you're absolutely right, we do have a lion — his name's Christian. He has a habit of leaving his old bones lying around once he's bored of gnawing on them.”

  The woman stared at John for a minute, puzzled; then, assuming he'd made a joke, she burst out laughing.

  By now Christian was right next to her; he sat down by her leg, staring up at her. His eyes were twinkling mischievously.

  “No, really, madam,” John said seriously. “Look, we do have …” And as he spoke he pointed down at the lion cub.

  Christian didn't move a muscle.

  The poor woman looked down slowly … She couldn't believe her eyes. Shrieking in alarm, she jumped behind the nearest piece of furniture, terrified. Even when John crouched down to give Christian a cuddle and prove how gentle and playful he was, she wouldn't move from her hiding place. Eventually, after a lot of reassurance from John — along with a sit-down and a cup of tea — she recovered from her shock.

  Christian, realizing the fun was over, sloped off to find something more entertaining to play with.

  The little lion was content. He adored his new space and all the attention and love he was getting. And John and Ace were as happy as they had ever been. They'd been warned about the problems of welcoming a lion cub into their home, but for now life was fun.

  However, Christian was growing up fast. He was already four months old, and things were about to get a lot more complicated.

  One day Christian was relaxing in one of his favourite places — the landing halfway up the stairs that led from the shop to the flat above. He liked being up high, so he felt comfortable there — almost as comfortable as he did in the shop window. Up there, he could chew on the banister and watch John and Ace as they went about their business.

  After a while Christian got bored of being by himself. His ears pricked up, listening out for his friends, and his eyes searched around for them. At last, hearing their voices, he climbed down the stairs and into the shop.

  Padding in quietly, he saw that John and Ace were busy with one of their regular customers, so he wandered around the shop by himself, sniffing the new bits of furniture that had recently come in. In the middle of the floor was a beautiful new table, ready laid as if waiting for people to come and have dinner at it. Christian snuffled around the legs of the table, but then, wanting a better view, he jumped lightly up onto it. As he landed, the tabletop tipped. All the glasses and cutlery and plates and candles slid sideways and fell to the floor with an almighty crash!

  John and Ace rushed over just in time to see Christian's confused little face looking up at them from the pile of smashed glass, crockery and tangled tablecloth. They stepped gingerly into the mess and picked him up. Ace held him on his knee while John checked the pads of his paws for shards of glass. Christian seemed unusually subdued.

  “What happened, little guy ?What happened? asked Ace.

  However, it didn't take long for Christian to recover from his shock, and within minutes he was padding down to the basement to start a new game. He soon turned his attention to the big mattress that now lay on the floor downstairs. He loved to drag it around and pounce on it.

  As he left the shop, John and Ace watched him and realized that their little lion no longer moved like an awkward cub; they saw what a big change had taken place since he had come to live with them four months earlier. He was too big to move unnoticed between the pieces of furniture, and was becoming too heavy to climb on them — as this latest incident clearly proved. Christian was growing into an adult lion.

  The bigger he grew, the more of a stir he caused amongst customers when he made his entrance into the shop. The regulars always greeted him warmly, sometimes bringing him a treat and always ready with a cuddle and a pat. But more and more often, new customers were genuinely alarmed by the big cat that lived in the furniture shop.

  Even though they still had a gentle and loving relationship with Christian, John and Ace sensed that things couldn't go on like this for ever.

  “It's not really fair on the customers,” Ace said one morning as they watched Christian scampering around the garden. “We know he's as soft as a teddy bear, but other people don't, and we can't afford to put them off coming into the shop.”

  And so, having lived with John and Ace for several months, Christian began to spend more and more time in his basement rather than being free to roam around as he had done previously. By now he bore little resemblance to the small, kitten-like creature Ace and John had bought on their Christmas shopping trip to Harrods. He had grown very quickly, and the beginnings of a mane appeared around his head. Only his eyes remained the same — intelligent and trusting. But as the weeks passed and his activities were more and more restricted, those eyes began to look sad. Was he going to be cooped up more and more in this new home?

  It was a quiet day in Sophistocat. John and Ace had let Christian out of the basement and he was wandering around quietly, when suddenly he spotted something on the floor of the shop. He went over to take a better look. It was long and fluffy, just like a tail, and he patted it, intrigued. Seeing that nobody was looking, Christian snatched it up in his teeth and rushed down into his basement.

  When John and Ace followed him to rescue the object — it was a fur belt that had fallen off someone's coat — they found him running around with it in his mouth, making excited sucking noises.

  Ace approached him to take the belt out of his mouth, but for the first time Christian disobeyed his human guardians. He did not want to give it back. He laid back his ears, his eyes flashed a warning and he showed the men his ferociously sharp teeth.

  John and Ace jumped back in shock. What had happened to their playful, cheeky little cub? Christian let out a snarl that echoed around the room and the two men looked at each other in surprise.

  “Let's just leave him with it,” said John softly, “and get out of here till he calms down.”

  But Ace shook his head, moving slowly away from Christian and keeping his voice as normal as possible. “No, we can't let him see that we're frightened. Let's just stay here and see if he forgets about it.”

  Christian did. After about five minutes he grew tired of the fur belt and tossed it to one side. He wanted to play, and pounced enthusiastically on John, just as he always did.

  In his playful nature, he was still very much like a cub, but John and Ace now realized they should never forget that Christian was a wild animal.

  Because it was so unusual to see a lion wandering around in London, Christian had attracted a lot of attention since he came to live with John and Ace. He had visits from newspaper photographers, television reporters, and lots of interested people who just wanted to have a look at him.

  Now that the lion tended to stay in the basement during the day, if somebody came into the shop really wanting to see him, John and Ace would lead them down the stairs and introduce them. So for Christian it was quite normal when, one day, his two friends came down the steps followed by a man and a woman he had never met before. Both strangers seemed very friendly. The lady was pretty, with blonde, shoulder-length hair; the man was dark-haired and had a bushy beard. Christian bounded over, patting John playfully with his paw and licking Ace's face with his long tongue.

  But these visitors were no ordinary customers. They were famous actors — but since celebrities often came into the shop, this was not particularly unusual. Their names were Bill and Virginia, and what was unusual about them was that they were the stars of a very famous film called Born Free. In the film, they played a couple in Africa who adopt an orphaned lion cub called Elsa and raise her themselves. When she is a fully-grown lioness, they release her into the wild so that she can live a normal life and meet other lions.

  When Bill and Virginia walked into the shop, John and Ace had both gasped in surprise. Naturally they assumed that the famous couple had come to see Christian. But the actors had had no idea that Christian even lived at Sophistocat — they had just been looking for a table for their dining room!

  The couple were very natural with him — after all, they were completely used to filming with lions. Christian soon rubbed heads with them, giving them the respect he had shown to John and Ace the day they bought him from Harrods.

  Having met Christian, Bill and Virginia played with him for hours. John and Ace asked them lots of questions about lions and Bill and Virginia found out all about Christian.

  When the couple finally got up to leave, Christian seemed reluctant to let them go. He kept pushing his ball over to Bill, as if to say, More, please!

  “We'll be back soon,” Bill promised. And Virginia bent down for one last cuddle.

  In the days following Bill and Virginia's visit, Christian seemed to need more and more fresh air and space. When he knew John and Ace were watching, he would squat over his kitty-litter tray — even if he didn't need to — in order to trick them into taking him outside. The church that owned Christian's garden had reluctantly said that he couldn't use it in the daytime any more: he was starting to frighten people now he'd grown so big. John and Ace could only take him there very early in the morning before anyone else was up, but Christian was finding the long days with nothing to do very hard.

  “I'm really worried about him,” John fretted one day as Christian hovered by his tray, impatiently scratching at it.

  Ace agreed. “We need to start looking for somewhere else — a place that can give him everything he needs.”

  He and John looked sadly at each other, realizing that their months of fun with Christian would have to come to an end. The lion sensed his friends were upset about something; he padded over, patting them gently one after the other, before climbing up, one big front paw on each of them, and giving them a big lion-sized hug.

  John and Ace hugged him back. “I can't imagine life without him,” John said, smiling.

  But they would have to — and things would move forward much more quickly than they had imagined.

  A few nights later, Christian was disturbed from his sleep by John and Ace racing down the stairs to his basement, cheering and whooping. The lion was confused by their excitement, but he was always ready to play, and shook himself awake before joining them. It wasn't long before the three friends were rolling around playfully together on the floor.

  “You're going to be free, Christian! Free!” Ace cried.

  Something very exciting had happened: Bill and Virginia had invited John and Ace for dinner. When they arrived, the two friends had been astonished to discover the real reason for their invitation.

  “I think we can help you solve the problem of Christian's future,” Bill had told them, smiling.

  Born Free, the film that Bill and Virginia had starred in, had been based on a true story about a man called George Adamson and his wifejoy. Bill and Virginia had become very good friends with George and Joy and saw them whenever they could. George was a top expert on lions, and he still worked with them every day; now he had a plan!

  George was upset to hear about lions like little Christian, who were born in captivity and then spent their whole lives trapped in cages, without meeting any other lions or living free — lions are wild animals, after all. He wanted to free a group of lions in a country called Kenya in Africa and let them live together there, just as they were supposed to. George was living in Kenya and he hoped that Christian could be one of these lions.

  “What do you think?” Virginia had asked after she and Bill had explained George's plan.

  John and Ace did not have to think about their answer for long. They had seen Christian's bright eyes growing sadder and sadder over the past weeks. They knew that their little home would not be the best thing for him for much longer.

  “You're going to get out of here!” John shouted now to the puzzled lion.

  Why John and Ace had woken him up to play in the middle of the night, Christian had no idea, but he could tell they were excited about something.

  “You're going to Kenya. To meet other lions!” cried Ace.

  Christian was going to be free.

  Once they had accepted George's offer, things moved fast. Christian's amazing journey from life at Sophistocat to the wild plains of Africa was going to be filmed: a television programme would be made of his experience. Some of the cameramen — along with the director — were going to visit Sophistocat and get started on the footage as soon as they could. They would be filming Christian inside the shop as well as in his garden, and the whole place was going to be closed to customers while they did so.