British Pathé

Synopsis: Newsreel footage shows a lion living with a family in Auburn, Washington.

Reality Cat: The female lion, whose name was Little Tyke, is shown hanging around the house with Mr. George and Mrs. Margaret Westbeau.

Little Tyke runs through the snowy yard before coming inside and licking and chewing on Mr. Westbeau. She soon moves to the opposite couch where Mrs. Westbeau is sitting with a longhair tabby cat and a dog.

The lioness cuddles up to the cat, sniffing and licking her distant relative. The cat seems unperturbed but not thrilled.

The narrator explains that Little Tyke came to the Westbeau’s home, a 200-acre experiment in good will between animals and humans dubbed Hidden Valley Ranch, as a cub and grew up eating mainly cereals and eggs, no meat. (It is not known if Little Tyke ate salad dressing.)

The Westbeau’s and their vegetarian lioness were somewhat famous in 1950, appearing throughout newspapers in articles, one by Hal Boyle in which he described what it was like to be kissed by a lion. She reportedly appeared in movies and on television and was even the mascot for a local sports team.

Little Tyke even got a mention in the newspaper comic strip Dixie Dugan.

Sadly Little Tyke’s diet may have been her undoing. In 1955 she passed away from what a vet explained as acute indigestion at the age of eight.

Final Mewsings: Cats don’t appreciate being upstaged by lions.

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