Makes Us all Want a Little Lion in Our Pasts

I just talked about the Born Free Foundation in the last post about those pop out animals. I decided to peruse their site to see what they're up to and what I'd just promoted when I found this clip that I'd already seen but still love. It's Christian the lion! If Monty were large and a lion my morning would look like this. However since he is a bunny he simply puts his feet on my laps and lays his head on the edge of my laptop waiting for pets and when those come he enthusiastically licks my arm, or pants, or face, or tummy, or laptop, or carpet, or his own foot... or... well you get the picture.

His story taken from the Born Free Foundation site:

In 1969 a young Australian, John Rendall and his friend Ace Bourke, bought a small lion cub from Harrods pet department, which was then legal. ‘Christian’ was kept in the basement of a furniture shop on the Kings Road in Chelsea, the heart of the swinging sixties. Loved by all, the affectionate cub ate in a local restaurant, played in a nearby graveyard, but was growing fast…
A chance encounter with Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna led to a new life for Christian. He came to live in an enclosure and slept in a caravan at their Surrey home. Then in 1971 he was flown to Kenya, his ancestral home, and returned to the wild by lion-man George Adamson. Almost a year later in 1972, John and Ace returned to Kora in Kenya and it is their reunion with Christian at this time that is shown in the clip. It was an emotional reunion: “He ran towards us, threw himself onto us, knocked us over and hugged us, with his paws on our shoulders.”