Quite some time ago I had written a blog on the first time we found the Styx lionesses and their cubs. I remember the day clearly even now as I write this, the excitement and the feeling of accomplishment when we had found them was overwhelming, it was also my first time seeing lion cubs of that size and I could not wait to go back to the lodge and tell everyone what we had seen, and from this moment I knew I was hooked. I was attached and invested in their lives already. Some might say that this is an error, but I couldn’t help it, I was no longer equipped with objective eyes.

At first, there were seven, an already large number, and then later the third lioness gave birth to four, bringing the total to eleven new little souls in this harsh yet beautiful place we call the bush. In the back of my mind, I always had to remind myself of the harsh reality that there would be a chance that not all eleven would see themselves through to adulthood, but I kept hope.

As the cubs grew older and their mobility increased, we started to see them more frequently. We watched the eleven grow, develop, learn and explore. We saw some “milestones” in their lives such as switching from only milk to starting to eat meat as well. We saw them interact with their fathers when they were with them and compared the size differences and watched the dynamics at play when there was a kill involved, we started trying to find out their genders and saw the different personalities of each individual. One can see how easy it is to find yourself getting lost in their lives.

The pride had been seen one day and given that from the beginning stages of their lives we constantly counted to make sure that they were all still there to put our, and our readers, minds at ease but on this day, we noticed that there were two individuals missing. Given that the bush is extremely thick at this time of year the two missing cubs could have been anywhere in the long grass making it hard to know confidently if they were there or not, but then one cub was found by itself at the waterhole in front of Selati Camp and we assumed that it belonged to the Styx lionesses.

The pride was then seen again, this time I counted ten cubs and could confirm that there was indeed one cub missing as they were all walking in the road making it easier to count. The cub that was found alone, was indeed lost.

We are unsure of the events that led to the cub getting separated from the pride; there are many possibilities out there and given that we had not seen anything taking place we could not answer the question on all our minds, “how?”. The lost cub was yet again seen, still in front of Selati Camp, while the rest of the pride was much further to the Western sector of Sabi Sabi. The cub then moved, no doubt in search of its family and eventually it made its way much closer to Bush Lodge, which is quite some distance away from where we had found it initially and then was not seen again.

The pride continued to stay on our reserve and every time we saw them, there was one lioness contact calling: most likely for her lost cub. I was devastated (this is possibly the reason why some might say that getting invested in a wild animal’s life is a mistake). The cub had been lost for about four days to our knowledge, this meant no food and more importantly, no protection... No protection from the hyenas that prowl as night falls or from the large feet of elephants who might catch wind of the cub, but then things appeared to turn around.

We had found the three Styx lionesses one morning with one single cub close to the last place that it had been seen alone. It was suckling constantly, giving us the idea that it might be the lost cub that was incredibly hungry.

We returned to them in the afternoon and suddenly, the three females and the one cub stood up and started to move. They moved steadily, stopping for nothing or no one. The little cub called constantly while following the lionesses, perhaps having learnt from getting lost and trying its best not to let it happen again. We followed them hoping that they were going to where they had stashed the rest of their cubs so we could count them.

Suddenly, in this stunning open area, they had led us to, we saw from the right the rest of their cubs running towards their mothers and the lost cub running towards them from the left. We quickly counted them, and tears swelled in our eyes as we realised all eleven were accounted for. The sounds coming from the mothers and the cubs were indescribable. The cubs began to play with one another, and relief washed over us as we watched this unforgettable moment with the sun setting behind us knowing that the lost cub was found.

The determination of these three mothers cannot be questioned or described, their senses cannot be fully understood, and their bonds cannot be broken. These animals are indescribably intelligent, caring and fully in tune with nature.

We often personify the animals that we see, giving them human qualities in order to describe them in a way that makes sense to us so that we can understand their behaviour. We generally associate the ability to care, have empathy and love for others with humans, but I believe that these animals have these abilities, sometimes more so than us.

We will never know the reason why or how it all happened, and sometimes we don’t need to seek understanding, especially when it comes to wild animals because we will never truly understand.