Zamba Page 6

  I had never spoken to him in that way. He had spent his entire life knowing that I supported and loved him, even if he made a mistake—and then, all at once, I yanked the carpet out from underneath him. The director got his shot, all right. Zamba rolled over in bewilderment and pain, bowled over by the emotional weight of my anger. I knew instantly that I’d crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed, and tears sprang to my eyes. I got to my knees and buried my face in his mane, begging forgiveness, but he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. And he was off-color for weeks, listless and barely eating although I was tempting him with his favorite treats, and showing none of his usual enthusiasm for life. I feel sick even writing about it now, and can assure you that I never did anything of the sort again.

  At the beginning, I called my system the EBC (emotional behavior concept). As time went by, it became known by the media as affection training. I always worried a little about the consequences of such a name. While it was true that the program required affection on both sides, many people assumed that affection was the only thing you needed to train an animal. Of course, that’s preposterous. Without emotional discipline and a great deal of knowledge, pure love produces a spoiled animal, one that has the potential for behavior even more dangerous than the behavior it might exhibit in the wild. Ultimately, though, the name stuck, and I’ve gotten used to it.

  The philosophy behind affection training is simple, and it’s always a two-way street. The key elements, for both human and animal, are:

  LOVE: a total commitment to each other.

  PATIENCE: an infinite amount.

  UNDERSTANDING: so we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

  RESPECT: so we don’t take advantage of each other.

  I had been honing the philosophy for years. With these elements in the right combination and proper balance, I was sure I could raise a happy, healthy, loving, and secure animal who would be a joy to work with.

  And as soon as I met him, I knew that Zamba would be the animal to prove my theory.

  8

  The philosophy behind affection training may have been simple, but its implementation was not. As committed as I was to training without violence, affection training was an idea before its time, and I took a lot of flak from my competitors, who often told the studios that my methods were too dangerous.

  For affection training to work, the animal had to begin when it was very young—six weeks was ideal. When you bring an animal up with affection training, you become that animal’s mother and father. Unlike “regular” methods, the training is not made up of small lessons but takes place twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  That’s why I had Brini and Jack bring Zamba to my ranch in the Santa Monica mountains. I felt that it was important for him to experience as natural a setting as possible and grow within an environment suited to his way of life. Thankfully, the ranch was everything he could ever want. Its wide-open spaces gave him ample room to roam as well the opportunity to be involved with the staff and a vast array of exotic animals. It allowed him the right balance of freedom and restrictions.

  I wanted to raise Zamba as a member of my own family. To train him the way that I wanted to, I had to become his everything. I had to protect him and to care for all his needs. I needed to become his teacher, and I was looking forward to learning from him as well.

  Most of the trainers I knew felt I was treading on dangerous ground.

  “He’s cute now, but when he matures, it’s going to be a whole different story,” they said. “His real nature will reveal itself and do you in. He won’t be able to help it.”

  Perhaps, I thought, but I was determined to see it through.

  As you might imagine, inviting a lion cub into your house means a significant change in your way of life—for both of you. I was happy to provide accommodations, but there were a couple of rules that Zamba had to follow.

  Potty training was the first step. It was also one of the easiest. When I showed him the dirt-filled box he scratched a bit, and then anointed it, and it was settled. In all the time young Zamba lived with me—whether we were in a new house or a new country—he always used his box.

  When he got older and outgrew the largest size, we had a very large “doggy” door built into the back door so he could do his business outside, by the beautiful pepper tree in our yard. He moved around with no restraints—an important step in his training. As he grew, we had to keep cutting the door bigger and bigger so his back wouldn’t scrape the top. Once, on one of his “duty calls,” he carried the screen door on his back into the yard! On one or two occasions when Zam was full-grown, he couldn’t make it to the backyard in time. Both times, he used the house cat’s box—it was amazing and very gratifying to see how accurate his aim was.

  Like the other animals, Zamba used the pepper tree to sharpen his claws, but he also needed a place to do it inside. Every domestic cat owner has had the experience of spending a lot of money on a fancy cat post, only to find that kitty prefers the couch. I was worried about the same thing. I knew that whatever I introduced had to be compelling enough to entice him away from the objects in the house, different enough that it would attract him.

  On a trip to the mountains, inspiration hit, and I brought back a large, heavy, strong-smelling cedar log. It stood some six feet tall and had a few thick limbs protruding from it. All the small branches were gone. I washed it down and thoroughly scrubbed off all the forest debris until the fresh underbark appeared. Upending it, I braced it into the floor in the corner of the room with heavy metal brackets. Voila—the biggest cat-scratching pole in the world!

  I reasoned, and correctly so, that the smell separated it from the other objects, and revealed it as more than just another piece of furniture. The war was not yet won, though—it took the destruction of a few pieces of African art and a heavy canvas chair, and a lot of compliments before Zamba fully comprehended why the cedar log was there, but once he got the hang of it, he never strayed from it. It was also his favorite place to scratch an itch—and when he was done, he walked away smelling like a tree.

  He was a perfect gentleman, and always kept his claws retracted unless he was sharpening them on his tree. About once every month I would look them over to see if they needed filing. Most of the big cats don’t need any work on their claws: they do a very good job of keeping them filed by themselves. And that’s a good thing, because most cats, domestic or exotic, don’t like to have their paws and claws handled.

  But occasionally big cats would get what we called a “lag” claw. This is when the tendons in the claw no longer support it, so it hangs down instead of retracting like the others. A lag claw is constantly getting caught on things, and would certainly wreak havoc on any bedding or the rugs in the house. And as you might imagine, a lag claw also has the potential of being very dangerous when the cat is playing with humans because he has no control over it. It could very easily snag skin or hook into your body.

  So I was conscientious about taking care of Zamba’s claws regularly, even though getting his pedicure was not a pleasant experience for him. It was important to get him used to having his paws and claws handled while he was still young. I didn’t want to be doing it for the first time when he was an adult with a lag claw!

  Like everything else with Zamba, he’d cooperate, but only if you did it his way. In this particular instance, that meant that he had to be lying down when you were cutting his nails. He wouldn’t let me trim them if he was sitting or standing; I had to lie down so he could lie next to me and rest his head on my lap. Then, one by one, I would slide the skin back to reveal the claw. When he was a cub, I was able to use regular domestic cat claw trimmers, but as he grew, so did his claws. Eventually I had to use a massive pair of mechanic’s dikes, like a pair of cutting pliers, to get the bulk of them. I did the precision work with the coarse side of a nail file. Each nail took a while because he didn’t want me to use a big file—I don’t think he liked the noise.

  The b
iggest claw (and therefore the hardest to trim) was the dewclaw, the fifth toenail on a lion’s foot. It sits high up on the leg, like a thumb. It’s never sheathed, and it never touches the ground. To get at the dewclaw, I had to climb over him and sit with my back resting against his mane. Then I could pull his foot over my shoulder and get the job done.

  Clipping Zamba’s claws was thankless work: no matter how good a job I did, he would always go to his cedar tree and sharpen them.

  I gave Zamba a bath once a week when he was a cub. Lions, like most cats, hate water, but I knew there would come times as an adult when we’d need to give him a bath. So I wanted to get him used to it early. I knew that we could make it fun, as long as I wasn’t afraid of getting wet. I’d spray him (and me) with the hose, and we’d roll around and wrestle in the puddles, and eventually it became a special time together. Even as an adult, when the time came for his bath, he saw it as playtime.

  He was beautiful after he’d had a bath, and it was a real joy to maintain Zamba’s gorgeous mane and coat. He had an exceptionally spectacular mane. Huge, thick, and rich in texture, it reached from his head to the middle of his back and down under his body, covering his belly completely. The color was stunning, like spun gold, with light orange, yellow, brown, and ocher highlights and a fringe of black. His coat was the color of harvested straw, tawny with a tinge of burnt orange, and a thick burst of black hair tipped his tail.

  I groomed him every day, using a variety of brushes and combs. I would always start at the least enjoyable spot. This made him sit still, knowing that the best part was yet to come. Like a little kid with curly hair, he didn’t like it when I accidentally pulled his mane, and would complain loudly if the comb got stuck.

  Zamba did a lot of commercial work, and one was for a well-known hair shampoo and conditioner. They wanted us to wash, condition, and curl his mane, just as if he were a woman. Of course, we had to use about seven bottles of the stuff, but we did it just as they’d asked. I can’t pretend that he didn’t look hysterical in the curlers, but the result was worth it—I’d never seen his mane as glorious as it was when we brushed it out.

  Food is an important part of a growing lion’s life, and it played a role in our training as well.

  I never allowed Zamba to eat from a plate, but hand-fed him instead. I wanted him to feel my hand, and to know that it was under the slab of meat that he was eating for lunch. Hand feeding also reinforced to him that his only food came from my hand. Obviously, it was very important that he never snapped. In the early stages of training, I prevented this by overfeeding him a little, so that he was never in a hurry for his food and would take it gently. As I decreased the food he still responded the same way, gently, and after each meal he would lick my hand clean. I would often soak my hand in blood from the meat and allow him to lick it, so that he’d know the contours of my hand well, and never mistake a finger for a treat.

  Sometimes he would wait quietly at the table while we ate dinner, sitting quite still by my chair, waiting for a sign that a small morsel was coming his way. It was one thing when Shaka, our Rhodesian Ridgeback, waited for a tidbit from the table, but when Zamba sat, his head was as high as mine. He watched every bite. Have you ever seen a lion drool? I had to put a bath towel down on the floor.

  I know that a lot of people think that an animal has no place in the dining room, but I never considered his presence a problem; it was an honor to share a meal with him, as it is to share a meal with any close friend. I would mix a bit of meat in the stew sauce or combine cottage cheese with ice cream, and he would just sit and drool until his treat came.

  Scraps from the dinner table don’t sustain a growing lion, though—our meat bills were staggering. In a week, Zamba would eat about sixty pounds of meat—when he was growing, he could put away twelve or fifteen pounds a day. A nutritionist analyzed Zamba’s diet as he matured, adapting the amount and composition.

  Later, when he was full-grown, I would undertake quite a radical experiment with Zamba’s diet: vegetarianism. I have always believed that there is a correlation between eating meat and having a violent nature. It’s always baffled me why humans are carnivorous. Carnivorous animals kill to eat, and yet we humans don’t have the physical abilities to kill—no claws, no fangs. Some anthropologists believe that primitive humans started as vegetarians, foraging from the forest and growing food crops, but when they saw other animals eating flesh, they began to eat it as well. I have often wondered what change in our psyche happened when we started killing animals to eat.

  If it was possible for a vegetarian to become a meat eater, could the reverse also be true? Could a meat eater become a vegetarian? And what effect would that have on a carnivore’s behavior? I wanted to see if a lion could be conditioned to become a vegetarian, without stress or force. I also wanted to know if it was the taste of the meat the animal wanted, or if there was something in it that they really needed.

  Once again, Zamba was a perfect candidate to test my theory. I called our veterinarian, and together with a top nutritionist, we came up with a menu that would give a carnivore a full and healthy diet without meat. The essential elements included eggs, milk, rice, pasta, beans, soy, meat flavoring, calcium extract, oatmeal, legumes, tomato sauce, and cocoa, blended with a wide variety of vegetables, vitamins, and mineral supplements. We didn’t feel that it would be good for Zamba’s system to have a drastic change in his diet right away, so to begin with, we added 70 percent organ meat. Our plan was to slowly reduce the amount of organ meat until there was none added to the meal. Our first batch of the new formula ended up as a ten-pound cake.

  I decided to use two full-grown lions to test our cake—Zamba, who had been hand-fed since cubhood, and a second lion who was a zoo animal, who was not tame at all, but wasn’t afraid of humans.

  We waited two days after their last regular meal before starting the program to make sure they were really hungry.

  Zamba sniffed at the cake, picked it up, and shook it a few times before he slowly proceeded to eat certain parts of it. He stopped a few times, smelled it, then continued eating. I noticed he would separate certain foods, eating only those he favored, so we learned what was appealing to him and what was not. If he left some food aside entirely, we’d take it out, as long as we felt it wasn’t an essential part of his diet. We tried different combinations for a number of weeks, until we felt we had the right mix.

  We started reducing the meat about 5 percent every other day. Within six weeks, the cake was meat-free, and yet he never hesitated to eat it. Finally we took away the meat flavoring. He hesitated a bit but continued to eat.

  I looked for any signs of lack of interest. I didn’t want him to feel he had to eat it to please me, although I wasn’t really that worried about it; cats are particular, and I knew that if he really didn’t want it, he’d have refused it altogether.

  The other lion was a bit slower in his response. He sniffed and played with the first cake for a few minutes before eating any of it. He would also separate certain foods, and we exchanged those for others. Interestingly, the foods he discarded were not the same as the ones Zamba had turned his nose up at—apparently, it was a matter of individual taste! He eventually ate it all. After a relatively short period of time, about two months, the cake was accepted fully by both lions.

  From this experiment we observed five important things. First, lions normally have a bad case of halitosis. They had little or none when on the vegetarian diet. Second, their skin and coats appeared fuller and cleaner. Ordinarily, when you run your hand down a lion’s back, you will feel an oily substance on its skin, and your hand usually comes away dirty. The meatless diet seemed to alleviate that problem significantly. Third, I also saw a noticeable change in temperament. Zamba was less lazy, and more willing to do things. He had more energy and vigor than I’d ever seen. The wild lion seemed more docile, and had a good attitude. I concluded that meat seemed to make the lions more lethargic. Fourth, the other lion didn’t bolt his new
food (Zamba never did), but took it slowly, which had to be better for his digestion. Fifth, their overall physical appearance was better. Their bodies took on sleeker lines.

  It was never my intention to continue this diet—lions eat meat, and I never go against nature when I can avoid it. It was just an experiment to see if lions could be made to eat a vegetarian diet—and so they can.

  Some questions remained for me. Why are there so many meat eaters? Some people say that without the carnivores the other animals would multiply out of control. Maybe. I continue to have questions about the correlation between eating meat and violence. Since we must kill to eat meat, does this reflect our true nature? Or are we really going against that true nature, and encouraging violence in ourselves, by eating it? Would humans be killers today if we had not started to kill to eat meat? I wonder.

  Zamba grew quickly, and I took him practically everywhere with me. When he was little, we’d keep him on a small dog collar with a leather lead. He grew out of that—into a large dog collar, and eventually a welded chain-link lead attached to the collar with a swivel that prevented the chain from twisting and choking him. We had the chain bronzed so it looked quite beautiful against his neck. Obviously it was metal, and sensitive to hot and cold, so we always made sure it was kept out of direct sun in the summertime, and on cold winter mornings, some unlucky passenger would usually end up sitting on it all the way to the studio, so it wouldn’t chill our royal Zamba’s neck!

  He loved to ride in my station wagon. We learned when he was young that he couldn’t ride in the front seat: it was just too dangerous. He’d want to “play” with the steering wheel, or he would want to be in my lap, or he’d suddenly jump up to lick my face. So I was firm about him riding in the back. The car was designed so you could eliminate the backseats if you were moving something very large, and we kept them that way all the time. I had custom heavy-rubberized flooring installed back there. It gave him traction and saved the car from damage when he sharpened his claws. He couldn’t stand up, or even really turn around, so he’d rest his head on the back of the front seat, his body filling the backseat. Of course, I couldn’t see out the rearview, so I got very good at driving using only my side mirrors.