OK, here are my cat pictures

You want cat pictures? Here's what we have.
These were all taken on our trip to East Africa in 2001.
The Lions were all easy to photograph because they were pretty used to safari jeeps buzzing all around them during the day. We were able to drive right up to within a few yards of the lions during the day when they're usually just laying around anyway.

The picture above is of two lion cubs as they finished their meal of wildebeast (the open carcass in the upper left portion of the picture). The poor wildebeast. They spend their time during the great migration searching for greener pastures and are constantly in danger of being picked off by the big cats, hyenas, and crocodiles. It's a good thing there are millions of them.

A couple of females laying about in the daytime heat. We had no problems finding prides of lions during the day, some as large as 15. Prides consist mainly of adult females and their young. The king of the pride, or the sole adult male, is usually not far off. When the young males become of age, they leave the pride in search of their own pride. This usually requires a vicious fight with the king of another pride. If successful, the new male will take possesion of the pride and proceed to kill all the young offspring in the pride and begin mating with the females, starting his new bloodline for the pride.

A cheetah perched on a mound of grass in the early moring hours searching for a kill. Cheetahs are more solitary in nature and a bit more shy. This picture was taken from our jeep which was a fair distance away, explaining the blurriness of the picture.


More Lions



A young curious leopard climbing on a branch. Leopards are the great tree climbers of the big cats. They will often drag their kills up into trees to dine on. The mother of this young leopard was sleeping in the bush just below, totally oblivious to the jeeps with photographers snapping away at her cub.