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# The lioness Kinuli, who lived in a Moscow communal flat with writer Vera Chaplina
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-tridtsatye-gody-istoriiu-lvitsy-iz-kommunalki-na-bolshoi-dmitrovke-16-znali-vse-i-ne-tolko-v-sssr/
- Published: 2022-02-21T08:03:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:08:53.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Moscow, Mores, Nature

In the 1930s everyone knew the story of the lioness from the communal flat at 16 Bolshaya Dmitrovka, and not only in the USSR. Vera Chaplina, a member of staff at the Moscow Zoo and a writer of animal stories, took home a lion cub whose mother had rejected her. She named the little girl Kinuli, because, oddly enough, she had been "kinuli", that is, abandoned. For a year the lioness lived in a communal flat with her human mother Vera and her animal mother, a Shetland sheepdog called Peri, who nursed the cub, licked her clean and kept her warm. From her puppyhood Kinuli became an international celebrity: the foremost photographers took her picture, the world press wrote about her and her foster mother, and films were made. Kinuli lived only 10 years, a very short span for a lioness in captivity, and the circumstances of her death remain unclear; all that is known is that they were connected with a tragic accident that occurred during Vera Chaplina's absence

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_6024@21-02-2022_11-03-22.jpg)