She seems to be sleeping. She didn't move when the cubs left her side; she isn't dead because I can see that she is breathing because of the way her bulge is moving steadily up and down. I can't tell how long she has been pregnant just by appearance; I would guess that her cubs must soon be due. I begin to clean her largest wound with antiseptic; the more I clean it, the worse it gets. Eventually, I can see that she has a terrible gash in the side of her leg which is about half an inch wide and about four inches long. I can also see that a stone is lodged in the midpoint of the gash and so deep that it is almost completely enveloped in broken flesh. Hurriedly, I put on my sterile gloves; then rummage through my first aid kit hoping, with all my heart and soul, to find some sterilised tweezers. Success! I yank the tweezers out from the bottom of the kit and slowly, carefully and cautiously manoeuvre my position to get to the stone at an angle which will not harm or disturb the sleeping animal. It is important that I get this right because if I don't; she could die...
Thankfully, I manage to get the stone out safely. I took all of ten minutes, or more. It was almost exasperating to find the right angle at which to access the stone, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Once I had found a safe angle, I had to keep a steady hand whilst I gently slid the tweezers in towards the stone. This isn't easily done when you're shaking like a leaf. In this situation, one would have to transform from a leaf into a rock; then stay a rock while one steadily encloses a pair of tweezers around a fairly sized stone inside a decently dangerous mountain lion's deeply fatal wound and carefully slips said stone out of said animal's said wound and clears the bloody mess around said creature before returning back to the state of being a quivering leaf. Wait! I saw something...
I watch the mountain lion extremely closely while I bandage the wound that is now minus one stone. Her eyes flicker open. She looks at me. Panic rises in her eyes. Frantically, she looks around; not daring to get up. Her gaze falls upon the two cubs from earlier and her face relaxes once more. She is definitely their mother. A look of content in her eyes, she lays her head on my knee. Blinking once, she closes her eyes and begins to purr. "Shh," I whisper, stroking her head, "It'll be alright now."
From this moment forwards, things start to get better for the big cat in my arms. I clean each of her smaller wounds with Antiseptic. Starting with the wound on her ear, which isn't actually as bad as first appears, then again, ears heal quickly. Following this, is the wound on her tail, which is slightly larger than the one on her ear. After it has been cleaned, I wrap a small bandage around it. Finally, the wound on her rear left paw is exactly the same as her cub's wound. As it is also covered in dirt as well as blood, this wound requires extra cleaning; not as much as the wound on her leg required. Once the wound is as clean as I can get it, it is clearer that this wound is definitely the exact same wound as the cub's was. As I did with the cub, I wrap a small bandage around her paw and a little up her leg. "There," I say, softly, "All done." She opens her eyes and as she does, I gently place my hand on the side of her face. Just as gently, she moves her head away from my hand and licks it before placing her head back on my knee. "Do you have a name?" She shakes her head. "What about…" I pause, deep in thought, "Sarafina?" For a moment, it seems as if she's smiling at me. Sarafina is my new best friend and I am hers
Sarafina watches with interest as I get up and clear away all of the things I used when I first arrived at the blood strewn scene of injured mountain lions. Occasionally, she hobbles over to where I am fiddling with a piece of equipment and sniffs it before I put it either in my first aid kit or my back pack (for rock climbing equipment). When everything is away so that the cubs can't mess about; play or hurt them-selves with anything, the four of us lie down on the edge of the ledge together. Sarafina and I name the two cubs Simba and Nala. Quite content, the cubs curl up together and begin to purr; with Sarafina watching over me, I soon fall asleep too.
When I awaken, Sarafina is gone. Frantic with fear, I whip my head around in search of my companion. It has gotten so dark that I can hardly see and the moon is casting an eerie glow over the ledge making things seem worse. As my eyes adjust to the lack of light, shapes become clearer to me. Sarafina is pacing behind me. I look up to see two large, four-legged silhouettes, looking ready to pounce, on a ledge above us and a starry sky which would be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen if it wasn't for the masses of vultures circling above us. Almost immediately, I hear a high-pitched laughing sound. I fling myself around to look over the edge of our ledge to see… Hyenas. We have to get out of here!