Various Tales (Contos)

Text 6: The Rescue of a Big Cat

Yes, my name is Kholwa. And no, I don't like you enough to let you get close of my territory. So don't get on my nerves. Why is that? Let's see... My mommy and the others of my pride were killed by filthy humans because of illegal hunting. Only I escaped. Just only to be put in a suffocating cage where more humans came to irritated me a lot more. I tried to rip out the wood between the bars to escape but they saw and beat me with sticks and i started to get dizzy. They didn't respect me, they scream and beat me every time I didn't do something they want. Once they even didn't gave me food for days. I was scared and i was angry. I didn't want to see anyone.
  Until one day she came. I was lying down in my cage when I heard humans yelling at each other and I remember thinking "what weird creatures". But something I wasn't expecting was, before I even could sit on the farthest point on my cage, that this human would come in and lie down calling for me. Honestly, I was expecting to get beating, but she didn't move or do anything, which was odd so i decided to go check her.
She was sitting on the ground with something with a great smell. Then she was making a noise, that was just like my momma's noise. I got up, went closer to her and started sniffing her. She even let me smell her head. "She was definitely a really weird human", I thought. After that, I noticed that she had the smell of a lion and was incredibly patience. Then she started to pet me and using that thing with a really good smell spraying all over me when she got up. And that was fantastic! I felt really calm and relaxed. But the guy, who usually beat me, came in, interrupting us and got her out with loud noises and sticks. I grabbed one of those and throwed it away, because I didn't want the weird human to leave. I liked her.
After that, he punch my nose so I got angry and started growling. Then the weird human got in the middle of us, protecting me. She scream at the guy, I could hear my name, I could hear her saying to "get out of Kholwa's life", to "even think of touching" me again. Then she led me with some nice piece of meat to a trunk outside my cage, which i obviously got in. "The hell I wasn't going to stay there", I thought. I stayed in the trunk for a long time until she got to a large open area with a lot of enclosures and different animals there, I  could see some hyenas, giraffes, and even  lions and lionesses. I even saw a excited cockatoo barking at me, which at that point was the top of weirdness of my day.
And then she stopped. She got out, open a gate and told me to get out because that was my new home and I should get comfortable and welcome there. I could hear the lions roaring something like "hey new girl", the lionesses, "hey new kid, are you alright?" and the human crying softly, mumbling "I'm sorry what they did to you darling. For now on I'm gonna to protect you". Because of all that, for the first time, I feel genuine happy and loved.