Cats galore

Early the other morning while we were all having coffee before game drive, we could hear lions roaring and it was REALLY loud! We carefully walked towards where the sound was coming from and found three lionesses lying in the grass very close to the lodge! We quickly jumped into the vehicle and drove closer for a better view. It was a great sighting of the three – until they all got up and went to drink at our waterhole. But we could then circle around to head them off and had another good sighting of them coming out the bush. What a start to the day and right near the lodge!

Another morning we had a hunch that we may find our resident female leopard, Twinspot and her cub where we had left them the previous day. And we were rightl! We found Twinspot first and she seemed very interested in something across the road. We investigated and discovered there was a huge rank of impala straight through the bush where she was heading! We patiently waited for a while in the perfect spot to witness a kill. We must have sat for about 40 minutes… but nothing happened. So we left her to go looking for the cub, who we found hiding in bush close to a small dry riverbed. And when we saw Twinspot coming back to her cub empty-handed, we realised its tougher than you think to be a predator.

One of our dominant young male lions can still be seen mating with one of the northern pride females – they can mate constantly every 20 minutes for a few days at a time! We had front row seats when the male mounted her right in front of the vehicle, before they casually got up and disappeared into the thicket.Â