8

“So did the cub go back to the circus?” Juan asked. His face was tense, as if he was living the story.

“No,” said Mona. “I love my uncle, and I love the circus—the acrobats and jugglers and all that excitement. But it’s not the right place for wild animals, and especially not Kiki. She was used to running around the garden and playing. She loved splashing in her wading pool and was very good at climbing trees. In fact, she made sure I got good at it too!”

“I didn’t know lions climbed trees.” said Juan.

“Some do,” said Mona. She pointed to the big trees along the back fence. “Those trees were smaller then, but they were tall climbing trees for a nine-year-old girl and a lion cub.”

Grandpa made Kiki a scratching post when she was a few weeks old so she could practice sharpening her claws on that instead of the couch. He covered it with a scrap of carpet, because that’s how cats like their scratching posts.

But Kiki was not a cat, and her teeth needed to grow bigger and stronger than any kitty’s. She chewed and scratched the post when she had nothing more exciting to do, but most of the time she liked real wood better. A few days after Uncle Matthew called, she chewed chunks out of one leg of the kitchen table. Grammie thought it was funny. She knew she’d like telling people that the table had been carved by a lion.

But that’s not what she told Kiki. “Naughty lion!” said Grammie. “Go outside till you can be good!”

Kiki stalked out to the garden and started scratching the bark of a big magnolia tree. The feel of its bark under her claws was even better than the table leg.

Suddenly she saw a squirrel in the branches above her. Kiki was much too young to hunt, even if she’d had a mother lion to teach her, but she knew that she wanted to chase the squirrel.

She pulled herself up onto a low branch.

The squirrel chattered at her.

The lion cub scratched and climbed higher. The squirrel chattered again, and Kiki climbed to a higher branch.

The squirrel disappeared into the top of the tree. Kiki pulled herself up onto the next branch.

Grammie had told Mona to wait before she followed Kiki out to the garden, because she wanted the cub to remember that she’d been naughty. It felt like a long three minutes before Mona could grab a ball and go out to play with her.

“Kiki!” she called, waiting for her friend to come rushing, bumping and rubbing her head against Mona’s knees with happy lion grunts.

Frieda and Vicky looked up from their afternoon naps in the sunny living room. Freckles and Buck came running from different snoozing spots in the garden, in case Mona was going to feed Kiki something delicious. Only Goldie, too deaf to hear, went on sleeping.

But Kiki was nowhere to be seen.

“KIKI!” Mona shouted.

A growly meow came from the magnolia tree. Mona had never heard the cub make exactly that noise before, but she knew it was a frightened noise. She looked up and saw Kiki lying on a high branch, with her legs dangling on either side.

Mona raced to the bottom of the tree. “How did you get up there?”

“Meow!” said Kiki.

Mona was pretty sure that meow meant “It doesn’t matter how I got up here—just get me down!”

Mona started to climb. The magnolia tree was her favorite climbing tree, but she’d never gone as high as the branch where Kiki was now. It didn’t look strong enough to hold her.

She scrambled up to the branch below and caught her breath. Holding the trunk with one arm, she reached toward the cub. She could almost touch her—nearly, nearly…but not quite. “Come on, Kiki,” Mona coaxed. “Just wiggle backward. I’ll help you.”

“Mona!” Grammie called. “Can’t you find Kiki?”

“Up here!” Mona shouted. “I can’t quite reach—”

The lion cub wriggled away from her hand, farther down the branch.

“Kiki, stop!” Mona shouted, but now the thin end of the branch was sagging under the cub’s weight. Kiki couldn’t stop, she was slipping and sliding…and before Mona could say anything more, the cub was springing right off the thin, whippy end of the branch.

Straight over the back fence into the Hoovers’ yard.

Mona slipped down the trunk as fast as she could, tearing her bandage and skinning her hands and knees.

“Are you all right?” her grandmother called.

“Kiki’s in the Hoovers’ backyard!” Mona panted, sucking the blood off her hand.

Grammie sprinted to the fence. The fence was tall, and Grammie wasn’t, but she pulled herself up and over like an acrobat in Uncle Matthew’s circus. By the time Mona scrambled over behind her, her grandmother had already run right through the garden to the road on the other side.

The Hoovers were nice people and good neighbors. They didn’t have any pets, but they probably wouldn’t mind a lion cub in their yard just this once.

The problem was that because they didn’t have any pets, the Hoovers didn’t have a fence across the front of their garden. Kiki could run straight out of their backyard and down the street. And frightened animals can run a long way.

“Did you find her?” Juan asked anxiously.

Mona nodded. “She got such a fright that she hid in the first place she saw. Luckily, that was under a hydrangea bush by the Hoovers’ back step. She was very happy to have my grandmother carry her home.”

“Poor little thing!”

Mona had told people this story before. Most people laughed when she described the little lion flying off the branch into the next-door garden. That was why she didn’t tell most people about it anymore.

Because what she remembered was the way it seemed to happen in slow motion, as if she ought to have been able to stop it. She remembered the way her chest felt almost too tight to breathe.

And she’d never forget spotting the tawny lion cub under the big blue flowers. It sounded like a birthday-card cute picture, but it wasn’t, because Kiki was too afraid to recognize her at first. For those few moments, the cub was a wild animal, with her eyes wide and her ears flattened back. In her terror, she could have scratched or bitten without knowing what she was doing.

Mona remembered lying quietly on the ground in front of the bush, murmuring the things Kiki liked to hear. Finally the cub’s breathing had settled, her eyes had calmed, and she’d let Mona pat her. Then she crawled out to be rescued and turned into a pet again.

When Mona’s grandfather had come home from work, he cut off every branch in the yard that dangled over a neighbor’s fence.

“I hate thinking of an animal being so frightened,” said Juan, scratching the goat under his whiskery chin. “That’s why I’ve decided that now I’ve retired and can do what I like, I want to work with animals who need help.”

“Like Fred?” asked Mona.

The old man laughed as the three-legged goat rubbed his head up and down Juan’s leg. “Like Fred,” he agreed. “But there’s only one Fred. I figure I should be able to help more animals than that.”

“That’s what I’ve always wanted to do too,” said Mona. “But what I know about is working in an office.”

“I bet you know more than you think,” said Juan.

The idea seed at the back of Mona’s mind sprouted a shiny new leaf.