Leopard Couple Separated by Male Lions

So we've just arrived at Camille Sliop Waterhole and there's these two magnificent young male lions on the left hand side. There's the waterhole sign and there's a youngish looking leopard on the opposite side of the river bed just sitting in the shade watching these two male lions trying to decide what to do. We look more closely and establish that the leopard is in fact a young female. She begins contact calling softly and seems really agitated. She keeps staring in the direction of where the two male lions are resting. The fact that she keeps contact calling and staring towards the lions suggests that there's another leopard in the area and perhaps they were separated by the lions earlier on. She becomes more restless and moves into the open to get a better view. In our experience, when leopards are disturbed by lions they will usually move out of the area as quickly as possible. However, she was very intent on getting closer towards the lions even with a curious audience of oryx watching her. While she continues contact calling, we managed to ID her thanks to the leopard identification kit and excellent work done by the Kalahari Leopard Project. Her name is Gorrid which means the spotted one in Khoisan and she is just over three years old, born in around April 2020. Again, thanks to the Kalahari Leopard Identification Project, we know that Gorrid had been seen with a male named Atule near the Kamilsliep waterhole a few weeks earlier. So it is most likely that he is the other leopard in the area and why she is contact calling so much. Between three and four years of age, she is looking for a dominant male to potentially father her first litter. She keeps on sneaking through the open, coming closer and closer, keeping a beady eye on where the lions are. Eventually, after quite some time, the two male lions lose interest. They decide to get up, scent mark their dominance and move off out of sight. After the lions have moved off, we finally see the other leopard. It is a male and he was hiding high up in the canopy of a camelthorn tree, very close to where the lions were lying. We consult the leopard identification kit and confirm that the male is Atule, which means quiet. Once he is happy the lions are a safe enough distance away, he climbs down the tree and crosses the road towards where the female is waiting for him. The courting couple are finally reunited after a very long morning waiting for the lions to leave them alone. Being a young female, she is very playful, appearing to show off her climbing skills to the male. He doesn't seem to be too impressed by her athleticism and keeps looking back to where the lions disappeared. This is quite possibly her first courtship process with the male leopard and she still has so much trying to impress him with her climbing skills. She really put on a show for him. If he isn't direction to the lions. It is such a stunning sighting as we drive next to this beautiful leopard couple walking along the Nossob riverbed. She is persistent in flicking her tail in his face and continuously presenting herself to him. A few growls from him let her know that he is not ready. Maybe he's still a bit grumpy that the lions interrupted his morning. After crossing the road in front of us, they disappear into the dunes for some privacy and so concludes one of our best ever leopard sightings in the Khalekhari.