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supporting cooking pots. It is built on the floor in 
one corner of the kitchen, and a pile of firewood 
often lies beside it. 
A hole in the kitchen floor serves as a drain 
down which the refuse from cooking is thrown and 
all kinds of slops are poured, to form a noisome 
compost on the ground under the house. 
In former days houses were lighted by 
dammar torches placed in wooden stands, or by open 
brass lamps containing coconut oil and small wicks. 
To-day, little tin lamps, burning kerosene, are in 
general use in the houses of the poorer classes. 
Though pigs are not kept, owing to the Malays 
professing the faith of Islam, and dogs rarely so, 
for the same reason, the Malay village has plenty 
of animal inhabitants. Cats of a peculiar Malayan 
variety, with a short tail with a very marked kink 
in it, are favourite pets, but the old strain has now 
become a good deal crossed. The cats are usually 
painfully thin and live upon plain boiled rice and 
whatever they can pick up for themselves. Goats, 
water-buffaloes, hens and ducks all live in, or near, 
the village. The hens and ducks are often penned 
up at night under the house, while the buffaloes 
have a stall of their own in which coconut husks 
are burnt at night to protect them against the 
attacks of mosquitoes, to which they are very 
sensitive. The goats may have a pen under the 
house or sometimes, as in Negi Sembilan, a separate 
house of their own, on tall posts with a gangway 
leading up to it. Precautions to protect animals 
against attacks at night are necessary, ducks and 
fowls against the marauding civet-cat, the wild cat 
.and the leopard and their eggs against the monitor 
