Girl Mauled by Lion Goes Home to Pet Cat

Laura Michele Small, 5, who was mauled by a mountain lion at Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park on March 23, returned home from a medical appointment Thursday. But her scrapes with danger apparently hadn’t ended.

On Wednesday, she was released from Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo, her head swathed in bandages, and made it safely by ambulance to her El Toro home. However, she was taken back to the hospital Thursday morning for physical therapy, her mother, Susan, said.

“On the way home this time, we had a traffic accident,” Small said. “We were sideswiped by another car in Mission Viejo, not far from the hospital.”

It was a minor collision, the mother said, with no injuries and minimum vehicle damage, but “it sort of shook us up a little, on top of all we’ve been through.”

California Highway Patrolman Robin DePew, who went to the scene on La Paz Road near Chrisanta Drive, said Laura “was really quite a great little girl” who chatted with him about her encounter with the mountain lion and told about her operations.

“She was wearing a safety belt and she was shaken up, with her bandages and all, so paramedics took her back to the hospital,” he said. “She checked out OK, and I drove the family home.”

He said a pickup truck apparently made a change from the fast lane to the slow lane, where Small was driving, and sideswiped her car. The accident still is under investigation, CHP spokesman Ken Daily said.

Aside from all that, things seemed to be going well. The little girl was overjoyed, for example, to be reunited with her pet cat, Sylbuster, according to her parents.

“She (Laura) was just so happy to get home Wednesday,” her father, Donald, said. “She played with Sylbuster, and she ate three bowls of macaroni and cheese for lunch. That’s a lot more than I could have eaten.”

Laura named her pet cat Sylbuster “when she was too young to say Sylvester,” her mother explained.

The little girl, who suffered puncture wounds in her skull and brain, severe damage to her right eye and partial paralysis, slept well Wednesday night.

On March 23, she was attacked at the wilderness park when a mountain lion lunged from the undergrowth along Bell Canyon Creek, took her head in his jaws and dragged her into the brush. The cat was finally beaten off by another park visitor and shot to death by professional trackers the next day.

The park remained closed until April 14. Authorities eventually decided it was no more dangerous than any other park in a wilderness area where mountain lions as well as rattlesnakes, poison oak and other hazards can be expected as a natural part of the habitat.