Leo Lion, Cloe Cheeta and Tom Tiger, Lost Felines from the Savanna #1

Leo Lion, Cloe Cheeta and Tom Tiger, Lost Felines from the Savanna #1

by Jonah D. Rigotti

It all started on one hot sunny afternoon, Leo Lion and his cousin Cloe Cheeta were walking near a river when suddenly a shadow pushed Leo to the ground. “Roar!” roared Leo as he swatted the shape on the nose, so hard that he flew into the river. After a lot of fighting, they stopped and friends. The shape was a tiger named Toma Tiger.

Toma was a tiger with a very sad life. First, his parents were killed by hunters. Second, he lived with his uncle Sher-Long, who didn’t care about him. That day, Sher-Long got sick, and even though his uncle treated him badly, Toma wanted to help him but know how.

A few minutes later, while Leo, Toma and Cloe were playing, no one noticed a snake slithering by. The snake was Sam Snake and he loved feline meat- especially cubs! Suddenly Cloe sniffed, saw Sam, and hissed. Leo and Toma saw Sam and their eyes bulged with fear. Suddenly, Sam chased the two cubs around a pod, across a mud pool and into the African Mountains as the cubs yipped with fear. They managed to escape Sam, but in return, they got lost.

30 minutes later, after Leo, Cloe and Toma got lost, Leo followed a river bank and the other two hesitated, but soon followed along the river bank. After what seemed 15 hours, but was really 15 minutes, they finally realised that they were lost. Cloe sat down on the leaves, Toma looked up to the canopy and Leo was so tired that he looked for a place to sleep. After an hour of sleeping, Leo woke up and howled with all his to get the attention of his family, but, alas, failed. Cloe decided to sleep, and Toma was still looking blankly at the canopy. Just as the sun went down, the moon came up, and darkness fell, Leo and Toma both fell asleep.

When Cloe woke up, she was starving. Leo and Toma were both looking like crazy everywhere they could for food. All of their stomaches were growling like crazy, but there was no food to be found. But, as if God decided to help them, Leo found bugs and started slurping them down 10 by 10. Toma soon followed and in a flash, everybody was slurping ants, caterpillars and beetles. After breakfast, Leo searched their surrounding, while Cloe and Toma finished their meal with fresh, cold water. After that, they took off again in hopes of finding the way home.

As the cubs were walking, Leo barged into a gorilla with a grey and squashed face, blue eyes, big noes, black fur and an extremely soft touch. Her name was Goria Gorilla. Leo growled , but Goria said “A-bah a-bah”. Suddenly, the cubs began yipping excitedly, but stopped abruptly. Goria turned around and stepped back in fear. She did that, because, slithering out of the shadows was Sam Snake.

Sam stayed on his ground for a moment and then started chasing the four friends. “Ta-ta,” Goria shouted as she raced up the stream with the cubs right behind her. Sam lunged and just as he was going to bite Toma, Goria grabbed a branch and Sam in midair. Sam spun once, twice, three times before landing in the river. Sam tried to swim but failed and disappeared. The animals went on, and finally arrived home.

As Leo and Cloe licked each other, Toma was looking for his uncle. Suddenly their families came running towards them. A minute later the cubs were looking at the subset. Finally they realized that Goria had went up to the mountain and knew they were safe.

But, in the mountain, Sam slithered out of the river. He went to the savanna to kill the cubs. However, they didn’t know they were in danger. They would never go back to the mountain alone again.

The End

This short story was written by Jonah sometime while he was in fourth grade, so 2012/2013. I think that the class worked on writing projects throughout the year, using storyboards and other technique to create multiple drafts and then a final version. I transcribed the final version here, keeping his grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors in tact. What’s interesting is that you can see the influence that all his reading has had on his writing style and that sometimes his head is far ahead of his ability to write!