Bonnie Nelson has always been a cat lover, taking joy in her feline friends during good times and bad.

Then she adopted a young feral cat, which she named Cheetah, for the big cats she had always admired. One day, this friendly little animal caught sight of a chameleon in the yard. Nelson watched as it dropped into a crouch and sprang, batting the hapless reptile out of the bush and swiftly dispatching it. "In two seconds, this little kitten became a wild cat. There's a big difference between domesticated and wild cats," said Nelson in a phone interview.

It was a turning point, one of many that has resulted in a series of projects that range far, geographically and in every other way, from her Lahaina home. She's now created a CD book called "The Cheetah Portal," which she wrote to bring attention to the fastest animal on the planet, now endangered, and she's involved in an effort to bring water to parched African villagers funded in part by the Lahaina Sunrise Rotary Club, for which she is international chairperson. Nelson also founded the PoPoki Press, to "elevate the esteem of the world's children and to benefit the helpless creatures of our planet."

Nelson, 54, who was vice president of finance at Lahaina Galleries, where she worked for 20 years, is in Africa now, discussing the wells project, helping to rehabilitate buildings at a Kenya children's orphanage and working with a project that will band and track a pair of cheetah to better understand their habits, needs and range.

She is also returning to the cheetah orphanage where she had the single most moving moment of her life: The chance to stand in an enclosure where an orphaned juvenile cheetah, Peba, "bowed," stretching before her, and allowed itself to be petted, so she could feel its rumbling purr rising through her fingers and up to her heart.

"I can't really talk about it without crying. There was no fear, just an outpouring of love," said Nelson before she left for Kenya.

In that moment, Nelson came to two convictions: that the spirit of her dead mother, who she felt to have been guiding her for some time, had left, no longer needed; and that the cats were asking for her help.

Even as she continued to tingle with the touch of the fenced-in cheetah, she was reminded of its need for the wild. "Seeing a cheetah sitting erect at the fence and watching a warthog (its natural prey) across the compound gave me a feeling of such enormous respect for their wildness. Even if (those particular animals) have been (in the orphanage) since they were babies, they are not domesticated," she said.

All through the 2006 safari vacation during which this incident took place, Nelson was writing letters home to a friend. When she came home, she sat for days with a yellow legal pad, transcribing these letters and adding impressions to create the book she calls "The Cheetah Portal."

A portal, she explained, is "a door, an opening. It's a gateway to another realm, a place where magic is. Everybody has their own portal, their own gate to somewhere else, where the world opens up, time and space open up in some manner. That's a portal."

The portal that opened for her created a determination to help preserve the home ground of the cheetah, a solitary, nomadic animal who needs great distances in which to roam and hunt. Inspired by an idea developed by another safari member, she also became determined to help provide water for drought-plagued villagers who often kill cheetah that prey on their domestic animals.

But, she said, the book is as much about a spiritual journey as it is about Africa and big cats. "The cheetah is more of an icon"; the listener's portal may lie anywhere. (She is working on a new book now, on butterflies, which also are disappearing; and she has a second Africa book, "Soul Safari," in the works.)

Nelson at first tried to have "The Cheetah Portal" published in the conventional way, on paper, but it was a costly uphill climb. Then she came up with the idea of an audio book, a project she could fund herself. She had 1,000 three-CD sets printed, using planet-friendly materials and the soothing recorded voice of her yoga teacher, Ateeka, who formerly lived on Maui but now works in Milan.

Nelson has given more than 700 CD sets away, "to anyone who has done something good for the planet."

This flummoxes some. "A lot of people don't trust you when you give something away. It's difficult to get people to say, 'thank you,' instead of 'what's the catch?' " she said. "I'm not trying to make money, or even raise money (although she offers suggestions for how to assist the cheetah and villagers through other agencies); I'm trying to raise awareness."

"The challenge," she said, "is not getting the book into people's hands; it's getting them to listen to it. Anybody that has listened has been entranced and moved, but you can't make them do it."

Anytime she would despair in the intervening years, something "magic" would happen — she'd open her mailbox and a friend would have sent her a postcard with a cheetah on it; someone to whom she submitted the book for an awards program would answer with a jpeg of a picture of a cheetah, the same cheetah picture that Nelson also owns.

She joined Toastmasters to learn how to speak effectively about the plight of the cheetah and what's happening to wildlife, and of the situation in Africa where so many lack clean drinking water.

Readily available, clean water could be one key to preserving the homelands of wildlife. When villagers are able to feed themselves with crops or domesticated animals, they may be less inclined to hunt wildlife for food or bounty. They may have less need to become nomads, broadening human territory as they restrict the places where wildlife live. And water would make reforestation — reseeding of once-plentiful grasses and trees — possible.

Still, says Nelson sadly, "I think if we don't change our ways within the next five years, we will lose the cheetah in the wild. That's what we're fighting for — to keep that cat free in the wild."

But more than that, her message is this: "Our planet is home to all of us, humans and animals, and we are all connected, we have to live in harmony or we will all lose our home."