A pair of mountain lion cubs found orphaned in Southern California will soon have an Oakland hillside filled with tall oak trees, lounging platforms, hay bales and lots of raw meat all to themselves.

But their zookeeper and cougar experts say the tale of the Orange County kittens is not a happy one, and it’s bound to be repeated in California with more cars on the roads and developments pushing farther into wildland, leading to increased fatalities of mama pumas.

The first cub was found in November ambling around someone’s backyard in the Silverado Canyon. Veterinarians confirmed his mother was hit and killed by a car a few days earlier, using DNA samples from the two cats.

“Mountain lions have these cool high-pitch chirps that mom and cubs will give to each other,” said Heather Paddock, an animal keeper at their new home, the Oakland Zoo. “They are taught to hunker down and only chirp when they hear mom chirp. Once they start wandering around, it means it’s been too long — mom didn’t come back.”

The second one — also a male, also nameless for the time being — was found three weeks later, 15 miles away, walking next to a road and nearly got hit by a car. Paddock said he is a “spitfire” and likes to hiss at her, compared with the first one, which is much more reserved.

“I think it’s great that he’s that feisty, rather than so stressed out he’s going catatonic,” she said. “I think he’ll be able to progress a little faster. The other one is more food-motivated.”

For their first weeks at the zoo, the cubs were in quarantine — a standard phase to make sure any illnesses are treated before broader exposure to animals and staff.

Once they were cleared — determined by having three “clean” fecal samples — the cubs were slowly introduced to each other. First, the straw in which they pounce around was swapped to get them acclimated to the other’s scent, Paddock said. Then, the zoo did a “howdy,” in which the cubs saw each other from across a door — one that allows for noses to be touched, but no paw swatting.

“That will give us an indicator of how they’ll interact,” Paddock said shortly before the face-to-face introduction. “All of us deal with stress differently. Some animals are cool. Others see a big scary thing.”

Erin Harrison, a spokeswoman for the zoo, said the cubs were cuddling within hours of meeting each other last week.

Zoo officials will soon do another round of tests to find out if the cubs are brothers, but say it’s not very likely given how far apart they were found.

The kittens will be housed at the vast $80 million California Trail exhibit, open to the public this coming summer, which is designed to showcase animals that once freely roamed the state — grizzlies, black bears, jaguars, mountain lions, bald eagles, gray wolves and condors.

The cubs, now more than 4 months old, hail from a mountain lion population of the Santa Ana mountains that experts say is in danger, probably the most at-risk of local extinction in the country. Because it’s so cut off from other groups, with roadways and development on all sides, the pumas there are extremely genetically isolated, said Justin Dellinger, the statewide lion and wolf researcher and a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Just one mountain lion entering or leaving the population can make a big difference in the gene pool, he said.

To ease their travel, groups such as the Mountain Lion Foundation are pushing for increased wildlife corridors, like tunnels or overpasses, that can guide animals across freeways and prevent them from getting hit by cars. But the culverts require a significant investment, not only on their construction and maintenance, but also on fencing around sections of highway where animals are known to frequently attempt crossings.

Lynn Cullens, executive director of the foundation, said the mountain lions that cross highways are often chasing deer or looking for territories of their own.

“These aren’t lions of the mountains that are coming down into our neighborhoods,” she said. “Instead, our neighborhoods are continuing to stretch further and further out into their territory.”

Zara McDonald of the Bay Area Puma Project said the cubs at the Oakland Zoo are an unfortunate snapshot of the state’s mountain lion population. While car strikes are a major cause of death, so too are depredation permits, which give people who lost livestock to a mountain lion permission to kill the cat. If it’s a female, the cat often leaves behind cubs that don’t know how to hunt.

Most orphaned cubs die before anyone finds them, Cullens said.

“It’s possible to make this all work, even with human population levels where they are, with thoughtful planning,” McDonald said. “Humans can make small modifications to accommodate them while keeping the ecosystem diverse and rich.”

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov