The small cute cheetah you see below and on the left of the pic above is Bella, probably our cutest cheetah. The grumpy looking cat to the right of Bella is Padme, one of our feistiest females, second only to the infamous Xena. When Bella first came to CCF in October 2008 she was only 5 months old and was found without a mother which meant that she would not be able to learn to hunt and therefore have to stay with us for the rest of her life (cheetahs learn to hunt from their mother who they stay with for ~18 months). 
Upon arrival Bella was very shy and was easily scared when approached. However, she slowly became used to her new home and started to greet myself and Kate in the way most of our cheetahs do, with hisses, spits and paw slapping. However, no matter how hard she tried Bella was just not very intimidating and only provoked myself and Kate into saying: 'ahhhh, you're so cute!' Not long before Bella arrived we had two 7 month old orphaned cheetahs come in, a brother and sister who are now known as Padme (see pic below) and Obi-Wan (yes there are lots of Star Wars fans here at CCF!). Right from the start we knew these two cats were going to be trouble as they were both very confident about coming right up to myself and Kate at feeding time and giving us a very impressive synchronised display of tough posturing. Sadly, it was soon time to seperate brother and sister and Padme was then introduced to little Bella - it has to be said we were a little apprehensive and thought Padme would eat Bella for lunch, but thankfully they hit it of immediatly.
Padme is definitely the dominant figure in this pairing and often unnecessarily picks on Bella at feeding time, smacking her out of the way and ensuring she gets her peice of meat first. However, Bella is learning from her mentor and is getting some bad ass attitude of her own and on occasion getting her own back on Padme. One day Padme got so worked up at feeding time that when she was chucked her meat she was unable to get a good grip on it and started to cause quite a commotion, Bella meanwhile was just sitting patiently beside her looking bemused. As Padme continued to make a right mess of taking her meal Bella did a sneaky double take before smacking Padme right in the face with a good right hook - this seemed to have knocked some sense into Padme who then finaly grabbed her meat and ran away with it. Seeing little Bella grow up from small shy bundle of fluff into a kick ass cheetah (as the pic below clearly demonstrates) made both myself and Kate very proud!
ahhhhh, but she is still sooooooo cute!!! :)
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