THE SMALL CATS' HOUSE
“SMALL cats! Small cats!” shouted a fat little boy, thumping in his ecstasy on the ground with his mother's umbrella, and capering with delight. “Small cats, father! Come on, mother!”
They had just come into the Zoo by the north entrance, seen some hawks (not calculated to excite any enthusiasm), tried to find the tortoises (still less exhilarating), and turning to the left, the fat small boy spelled out over a doorway, “Small Cats' House.” Here was something at last. Cats were exactly to his taste. Especially small cats. So he capered along the path, dancing out of sheer joyous expectation, as children do in presence of a Christmas Tree. How those small thick-shod feet will lag some three hours hence as the party, homeward bound, passes the little cats' house again! But just as the urchin was making a rush for the door, as if the small cats might get away before he get there, he caught sight, with a corner of his eye, of a kangaroo. This “metagrobolised” him. He stood transfixed.
The parents, slowly following, came up with him. “Those are kangaroos, Bobby,” said the father. And Bobby, giving them one rapid comprehensive look, as much as to say, “now keep just there till I come back, I won't be long,” plunged up the steps to find the little cat. He had made half the circuit of the room before his parents arrived. He had seen some particularly large cats, and some other animals that he did not call cats at all; but no small cat.
“Where are they?” he asked, excitedly; “show me the little cat, mother.”
“Phew!” said the mother, with her handkerchief to her nose. “Oh John!”
“Phew!” said the father. “Oh 'Ria!—here Bobby, come out of this! We're going to see the wild kangaroos.”
“I want to see the small cat,” cried Bobby. “Mother, mother! do show me the little cat whose House this is!”
But the parents were gone, and a sudden squeal from the ring-tailed coati hastened Bobby's exit after them. And he looked at all the kangaroos, and was gratified, in a moderate way, at the length of their hind legs, and he went into the sloths' house, and saw the great ant-eater waving his great tail, and the ourang-outang taking apple-chips out of the keeper's pocket; and he expressed a chastened satisfaction with each and all. But there was only one refrain to everything he saw—“but I didn't see the little cat!” Not for him were three of the chiefest wonders of zoology displayed. He hadn't seen the little cat. Let kangaroos leap for others, the ant-eater runkle its mouthless way through life, the Wise Man of the Woods distract the world of science—Bobby hadn't seen the little cat. By and bye, when he had watched the lions fed and the sea-lion catch fish, and had had a ride on the elephant and on the camel, and had given buns to the bears and his handkerchief to a baboon, he confessed, and generously enough, that the Zoo was not without attractions. “But, mother,” said he after all, as they plodded back to the north entrance, “I never saw the little cat.” Through the whole of that golden afternoon ran the dull grey thread of the one disappointment; and even when he had got home and had had his tea, and was very sleepy, the sight of puss on the hearthrug reminded him of what he hadn't seen, and stumbling up the stairs to bed he reminded his mother once more that he hadn't seen it. “Never mind, Bobby. Next time we go to the Zoo you shall see the small cat.”
Over which Bobby pondered but derived no comfort—which was right, seeing that his mother's statement partook of the nature of a taradiddle.
[Illustration: “THOSE ARE KANGAROOS, BOBBY.”]
Nor is the House named happily. “Lesser” would be better than “small,” and “tiger-cats' house” better than either. Nine-tenths of the people who venture in (handkerchief to nose) are puzzled when perhaps the first thing they see is the common English weasel, and the next a row of mongooses. As for the actual “cats” that are there, they are “small” as compared to the cheetah (the smallest felis in the lion-house, where the “big” cats live), but still they are of the baronetage, it not actually of the peerage, of the Furred Folk.
The clouded tiger is an exquisitely-handsome creature, and breeders in search of a new fashion in pets might create a sensation by introducing it, for by all accounts it is as gentle by nature as it is beautiful. Rivalling it in appearance is the ocelot, another large cat with a splendid fur, but said to be most unamiable. Here, too, is the serval, a very handsome cat; and here, too, the queer one that Egyptians worshipped. Seeing it one no longer wonders why the Egyptians drew cats' faces so unlike those we are accustomed to. It is of a solemn kind, but with a sinister expression—the result, it may be, of captivity. Close by is the caracal, one of the lynxes, something like a small puma, but with a shorter proportion of tail. At one time an American lynx was unfortunate enough to live in the same cage with him, and if he dared to come “betwixt the wind and his nobility,” or even if the caracal, in the course of his peregrinations, happened to get sufficiently near his companion to be annoyed with the sight of so vulgar a beast, he would immediately arch his back, lay back his ears, uncover his great biting-teeth, and “swear” in the most fearful manner, until the unlucky red lynx was quite cowed and looked as meek as its feline nature would let it, “evidently deprecating the anger of my lord, and although not conscious of having done wrong, quite ready to promise faithfully never to do it again.”
At the farther end of the room, among other creatures, is the coati, a pugnacious and inquisitive little animal, extraordinarily rapid in its leaping, which it accompanies with a quick sharp cry, while along the other wall are ranged the mongooses, among the most interesting of snake-eaters, from the superstitions that attach to them.
Most people, I find, still believe in the legend that the mongoose is proof against serpent-poison; but such is not the case. A snake when it strikes always calculates its blow so that the fangs shall reach the object aimed at. It would be a fool if it did anything else. But when the mongoose attacks the snake it does so with all its long thick fur on end, looking twice the size it really is, and the result is that the reptile is deceived. It strikes at it, but miscalculates the distance to the mongoose's skin by at least an inch, its fangs going no further than the fur and the venom expending itself harmlessly upon it. The snake, of course, can have no idea that the real mongoose is an inch and a half inside the fur, and so it darts its fangs at the surface which it sees, and which it supposes to be solid mongoose. And having once struck, a snake has no control over its venom, which spirts automatically and in this case innocuously on the ichneumon's deceptive fur. The quadruped knows this and is very careful to present its bushiest parts towards the snake, and is always whisking its tail and hind-quarters round so as to provoke the reptile to fruitless assaults, for it is very likely indeed that it knows that after striking a few times the most venomous of snakes is no longer venomous—for a time, and until it has secreted fresh poison. If a fresh cobra, for instance, were to bite, say, four persons in equally good health one after the other, the first would certainly die, the second might or might not recover, the third and fourth certainly would. But in the case of the mongoose, if a fresh cobra gets in one fair peck at its nose the mongoose is as certainly done for as the first man would be. And on the other hand, at the end of a lively scrimmage, during which the snake has struck in rapid succession, not once but a score of times, the mongoose, if he chose, could offer its nose to the reptile with certain immunity, for the snake is no longer venomous. So when people say, as if it were conclusive, that they have seen a snake draw blood from a mongoose, and the mongoose recover from the bite, they are recording nothing more extraordinary than if they themselves had drawn the blood with a needle. As for the mongoose curing itself of snake-bite by eating some herb which is an antidote, there would be nothing incredible in such a proceeding. There are far more wonderful facts than that in Nature authenticated beyond all dispute. But as it happens so many different plants have been positively produced by eye-witnesses as the genuine and only original antidote that the mongoose eats, that the bottom has fallen out of the legend altogether. As a matter of plain fact, a venomous snake can kill a mongoose as easily as it kills a child. But it seldom gets the chance. The mongoose is inconceivably swift in its attack and parry, and when the snake strikes it only wastes its poison upon fur, just as in the case of the serpent-eating secretary-bird which defends itself with its wings, the reptile wastes it upon feathers.
To return, however, to the “small cats.” In the corner, immediately by the door, is a very entertaining little cage. In it are some common English weasels, and if the cage were only in the centre of a room (one that did not smell so outrageously as the “small cats' house” does), a more agreeable “zoological” spot to sit and smoke a pipe while watching these delightful little demons could hardly be imagined. Next to the weasels is that much glorified person, the Cryptoprocta ferox, otherwise known as the Fossa. Nobody apparently knows much about this creature, which is peculiar to Madagascar, and has had attached to it a reputation of surpassing ferocity. It is an insignificant beast, like a magnified polecat or sable, with an extraordinarily long tail. Very restless in its habits, but quite ready to be fed from the hand by any passing stranger. However, there is a Frenchman, called Hamelin, who says that he has had most remarkable adventures in Madagascar, but unfortunately his style of narrative is so unconvincing that until he has been corroborated no one is very likely to believe him. He is an orchid dealer apparently, and, when hunting for these plants, his party of fifty armed men had, he, says, “to struggle almost night and day against the wild animals haunting these primeval forests'. The most terrible of all is the Protocrypta ferox Madagascariensis.” (Protocrypta for Cryptoprocta is distinctly good.) “During the daytime it is extremely dangerous, for it crouches in the forks of trees, hidden among the rich tropical foliage and climbing plants and watching for its prey. It is exceedingly agile, and the moment its victim approaches it slides silently down and in one bound is on top of it—a picture of wild ferocity. At night big fires had to be constantly kept up and men had to take the watch. * * * I was fortunate enough to capture two young ones, and their capture was attended by a terrible adventure—no less than the death of the brother-in-law of the King, a fine, handsome, well-built man. I sincerely mourned his death. It came about in this wise. Whilst we were busy with the young ones the mother returned, and, maddened with rage, pounced on the shoulders of Tsiampohe (the King's brother-in-law), rending the flesh from back and shoulders, and mangling him in a frightful manner. Tsiampohe fell as if struck by lightning. The next moment thirty 'zagaies' were quivering in the carcase of the fierce creature that had wrought such direful mischief.”
Could anything be more incredibly written? A creature with a mouth no larger than a domestic cat, teeth that are far from formidable, and no claws, strikes down like lightning a well-built man, and mangles him to death so instantaneously, that “though the next moment” thirty spears all together transfix the “protocrypta,” the well-built man is a corpse! A tigress could not have done it. But M. Hamelin says he saw “a protocrypta” do it—a small animal that a child could take up by its tail and swing over the garden wall—and warns people not to go hunting for orchids in Madagascar. Those who believe him are not likely to do so.