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Sophie’s Diary – July 20, 2017
Sophie’s Diary – July 20, 2017,
This morning we walked with two British volunteers along all of the enclosures to do a fence check and check on the lions. We saw Mela and she looked good as she was on her feet and walking alongside us. Next door to her enclosure were the brothers, Mandla and Isibindi. Mandla had changed a lot from the last time I was here, as he was very protective of Isibindi by roaring a lot. We saw Taai who was very laid back and looks like a model lion with his beautiful mane. In the Lööf Foundation Lion Lagoon enclosure is now a male lion and two lionesses who walked with us along the fence.
We checked on Natacha and she is also doing well. She isn’t on her feet as much as Mela, but I was told by others that she was up and on her feet earlier this morning, which was great to hear! Johan headed to the top of the mountain to help install a bathtub on Andi’s tent house deck while I went with the British volunteers to cut meat for the lions.
We put pain killers and antibiotics in Mela and Natacha’s meat, as this is needed post-surgery for them. We also put some medicine in Sasha’s meat as he injured his paw. However, we could not give the meat to him since Moya came to the fence and we could not see Sasha. We did not want to give the medicine to Moya. We filled Mela’s drinking hole and she drank from it after eating.
We cleaned the “operating room”/dining room as well after the two surgeries performed yesterday and then went to get the crate Natacha had traveled in from Spain when she first arrived at the Love Lions Alive Sanctuary. We had to get it for Mulan who is ten months old, as she is being transported to the vet clinic in Pretoria that is run by Dr. Peter Caldwell who did the surgeries yesterday. She will be admitted for three weeks, have surgery and then a recovery period. We first let Odin out of the enclosure to walk freely so we could get Mulan into the crate. There were seven of us all working together to get her inside. We tried many ways to get her inside, by luring her in with chicken heart, by giving her love and with Andi and Tale giving her encouraging words. It took us two hours to get her in! While all of this was going on, Odin mischievously got into our car and ran off with my back pack and swinging it around like a piece of prey. He took all of my jackets and things out of the car! Luckily Tale could get it back for me! He got into the backseat and pulled down the headrest with his paw. At one point, he was even sitting in the front seat playing with the seat belt!
It was so great to give Carl a rugby ball for him to play with, he really looked like he was enjoying himself! He still plays like a little football player and runs really fast! It’s especially cute when he plays with the rugby ball in the water!
We took a break this afternoon for lunch and ate a little restaurant together. We returned back to the sanctuary to continue with work and Johan continued with the deck. We are ending the day now by sitting up on the big rock, watching a gorgeous South Africa sunset!
Sophie Lööf
Lööf Foundation Chairman and Founder
