Question: Where are Zephra's cubs?

Answer: They are all over the place! Okay, I'll be more specific. You see, Zephra is a very fertile tigress, that we all know. She loves being pregnant and feeling life grow and snuggle against her. After giving birth, however, the reality sets in, that she will knowingly get pregnant again with a similarly large litter in the near future, all while trying to raise an equally massive litter already. In a few years, you end up swamped with dozens of cubs and only one parent (mainly because there tends to be few fathers who stick around, sad to say). Not only that, but Zephra is aware that she can't be the perfect parent with many many children, unless she had someone to help her raise them all.

So, we came up with a plan. As Zephra produces so many children, agencies that provide children for adoption and for colonies and the like use her as a main source of input. I'm not saying that Zephra now reduces her cubs to mere capital, much the opposite, in fact. She provides monthly messages to the guardians of her litters and provides means for communication between cub and mother as they get older. She is still a mother at heart, even when they are far apart.

The agencies don't take the children the instant they are born, so Zephra takes the time to be with her children, kept close and warm. She wants those first few weeks of their lives to be as precious as can be. It is hard seeing them go every time. She always wants to keep one for herself...one child for her to raise. Perhaps that might happen soon.

Sadness aside, this picture depicts Zephra as she cares for a young cub who had been mewling in the night. Now silenced, the two are content and share a mother-son moment they won't soon forget.