Being a declawed cat isn’t too bad if you’re not the cat and if the cat isn’t a lion in the wild. A declawed lion in the wild has a huge problem. Lenny was a declawed lion. Lenny was a neurotic lion. Always had been. He was a nail biter. That’s not a good thing for a lion to be.

Lenny would run down and jump a zebra. Having no claws, he couldn’t do much more than scare the zebra. Zebras scare easily but not to death. Eventually, the zebra realizes it isn’t being hurt and tosses Lenny off. The zebra may or may not give Lenny a kick in the head before rejoining the herd. He now has a good story to tell the other zebras.

Rocky liked to pick on Lenny. He’d call Lenny a lisping-lion. He once got himself so worked up that he swung at Lenny. Lenny fainted. He fainted before Rocky had clawed him. When Lenny went down Rocky was swinging at air until he hit the tree. That hurt. He slammed that tree exceptionally hard. Hard enough to jam his claws into it. Way in. He couldn’t get free.

Lenny woke up, saw the situation and ran off. The monkeys, who screeched and hollered when they saw a lion, making sneaking up on prey difficult, screeched and hollered and laughed at Rocky. It took Rocky hours to get free. He had to whack at the hyenas and then tug. Whack and tug, whack and tug. Wore him out.

Lois expected Lenny to bring home the food. Other than reproduction, Lenny didn’t have to do much else. There’s no fixing up the house or cutting the grass in the lion world. Bringing home the food and reproducing was about it .

Lenny saw the hyenas ripping apart some leftover kill and snatched it away from them. It was very, very ripe. Lenny had to stop a couple of times on the way home to gag. He dropped the leavings in front of Lois and crept off to nap. He crept off to avoid a dirty look too.

Lois took a look at the food, sniffed it, gagged and ate it. Better than nothing. Not a lot better, but a little better. Well, there will be no reproducing tonight, she decided. That was another reason Lenny bit his nails.

It was all part of a circle, a merry-go-round that Lenny couldn’t get off of. He was afraid to jump. He chewed his nails instead.