We say an image is 'soft' when it doesn't appear to be critically sharp, which is usually due to poor focusing but also, sometimes due to camera shake, although the latter is usually more obvious.
I like your lion shot but it's a bit washed out and you're not really getting the benefit of that beautiful African light in your shots. You haven't ticked your 'Editing OK' box under your avatar to show you don't object to people editing your shots, but as you've stated you don't mind I had a quick play with your lion shot.
As you'll see it's sharpened up quite appreciably and I've adjusted the saturation and contrast to give the shot a bit more punch. The shot is rather noisy - I'd have thought you could have used a lower ISO setting in that much light?
Either look at the sharpening settings in your camera or disable sharpening altogether and deal with it in post processing which is the better option. You shouldn't consider the shots out of your camera as a done deal - all shots benefit from a little tweaking in post processing and it's something you need to get into to really get the best out of your digital camera.
Your cheetah shot would also benefit fom a little tweaking in much the same way.
