DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70300#0212
184
kirby’s wonderful museum.
would pass through the bottom of it; an earthen pan placed
under each received whatsoever fell, which being duly emptied
and washed, they were thus kept perfectly sweet and clean.
In the day time they had the range of a hall, and at night
retired each to his own bed, never intruding into that of
another.
Puss grew presently familiar, would leap into my lap, raise
himself upon his hinder feet, and bite the hair from my tem-
ples. He would suffer me to take him up, and to carry him
about in my arms, and has more than once fallen fast asleep
upon my knee. He was ill three days, during which time I
nursed him, kept him apart from his fellows, that they might
not molest him—for, like many other wild animals, they per-
secute one of their own species that is sick—and by constant
care, and trying him with a variety of herbs, restored him
to perfect health. No creature could be more grateful than
my patient after his recovery; a sentiment which he most
significantly expressed by licking my hand, first the back of
it, then the palm, then every finger separately, then between
all the fingers, as if anxious to leave no part of it unsaluted;
a ceremony which he never performed but once again upon a
similar occasion. Finding him extremely tractable, 1 made
it my custom to carry him always after breakfast into the
garden, where he hid himself generally under the leaves of a
cucumber vine, sleeping or chewing the cud till evening; in
the leaves also of that vine he found a favourite repast. I
had not long habituated him to this taste of liberty, before he
began to be impatient for the i eturn of the time when he
might enjoy it. He would invite me to the garden by drum-
ming upon my knee, and by a look of such expression as it
was not possible to misinterpret. If this rhetoric did not im-
mediately succeed, he would take the skirt of my coat be-
tween his teeth, and pull at it with all his force. Thus Puss
might be said to be perfectly tamed : the shyness of bis na-
ture was done away ; and, on the whole, it w'as visible, by
many symptoms, which I have not room to enumerate, that
kirby’s wonderful museum.
would pass through the bottom of it; an earthen pan placed
under each received whatsoever fell, which being duly emptied
and washed, they were thus kept perfectly sweet and clean.
In the day time they had the range of a hall, and at night
retired each to his own bed, never intruding into that of
another.
Puss grew presently familiar, would leap into my lap, raise
himself upon his hinder feet, and bite the hair from my tem-
ples. He would suffer me to take him up, and to carry him
about in my arms, and has more than once fallen fast asleep
upon my knee. He was ill three days, during which time I
nursed him, kept him apart from his fellows, that they might
not molest him—for, like many other wild animals, they per-
secute one of their own species that is sick—and by constant
care, and trying him with a variety of herbs, restored him
to perfect health. No creature could be more grateful than
my patient after his recovery; a sentiment which he most
significantly expressed by licking my hand, first the back of
it, then the palm, then every finger separately, then between
all the fingers, as if anxious to leave no part of it unsaluted;
a ceremony which he never performed but once again upon a
similar occasion. Finding him extremely tractable, 1 made
it my custom to carry him always after breakfast into the
garden, where he hid himself generally under the leaves of a
cucumber vine, sleeping or chewing the cud till evening; in
the leaves also of that vine he found a favourite repast. I
had not long habituated him to this taste of liberty, before he
began to be impatient for the i eturn of the time when he
might enjoy it. He would invite me to the garden by drum-
ming upon my knee, and by a look of such expression as it
was not possible to misinterpret. If this rhetoric did not im-
mediately succeed, he would take the skirt of my coat be-
tween his teeth, and pull at it with all his force. Thus Puss
might be said to be perfectly tamed : the shyness of bis na-
ture was done away ; and, on the whole, it w'as visible, by
many symptoms, which I have not room to enumerate, that