Ornithological and Other Oddities 



these animals being frequently attended by their 

 respective young. The yellow prick-eared pariah 

 dogs were merely tolerated scavengers, but I 

 presume grimalkin was on much the same footing 

 as at home, though more lanky, miserable-looking 

 specimens of the feline race I never saw. And 

 this brings me back to my muttons, or rather my 

 mongoose. After Moya's caution I carried her 

 rather gingerly upstairs, and secured her in an 

 empty room, close to the bedroom I occupied in 

 the Hotel Perrot ; the conversion of said bed- 

 room into a combination of menagerie and labora- 

 tory being most nobly endured by mine host. 

 Then I went out on some zoological excursion or 

 other, to find, on my return, my new acquisition 

 imprisoned in a safe in the kitchen, whither she 

 had penetrated on getting loose from her string, 

 and where, according to the cook, she had come 

 near killing the cat, an exceptionally hideous 

 specimen, with a mew calculated to wound the 

 sensibilities of any right-feeling mongoose. The 

 cook's lively imagination must, I fancy, have 

 misled him as to Jo's bloodthirstiness on this 

 occasion ; on a subsequent interview nothing 

 but bad language passed between her and 

 puss. In fact, for a mongoose she was very 

 mild, and when introduced to a chicken, seemed 

 far less inclined for a fight than was the fowl — 



which was not perhaps to be wondered at, for the 



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