Curiosities of natural history. 3rd series / by Frances T. Buckland.

  • Francis Trevelyan Buckland
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Curiosities of natural history. 3rd series / by Frances T. Buckland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to wash and brush the fleas out of him, and in a week he would swim after a feather or a cork.* He was a black cat natural, and I think the sea water made him blacker; his coat was as clean as a smelt, and had a noble gloss on it. I would not grudge a five-pound note, poor man as I am, to have my cat back. Oh dear, my poor cat! My Puddles was as good a cat for a rat as he was for a fish. I cleared out my cellar once, and I found twenty rats’ skins as Puddles had killed, all scooped out as clean as your ’bacca-pouch, but the tails was not touched. He was a plaguey cat, though, for he would go out into the harbour to catch rats, and come in all covered with mud and lay on my bed. I used to give him the cat. I says, ‘ So you’ve been up on my bed before you was dry, have you ? Now take your punishment like a man.’ So I takes a nettle, and stands him on his front paws on the bottom step of the stairs, and I gives him his dozen. He stood quiet enough while I gave him a dozen ; but if I gave him thirteen, ‘ marr ’ he’d go, and away he’d fly as savage as could be. It was a bad day when I lost my Puddles; he was the most superbest cat as was ever afloat. 1 * While this story of how Pobinson Crusoe trained his cat to the water was fresh in my mind, I saw some poor little children taken down to the bathing-machine and treated in a very different way to that in which Greorge treated his Puddles. I would beg to refer the reader to the Appendix.