“That we do.”
“And fish together. So just let that butcher’s dog come across me.”
“Tse, tse, tse!” said the starling, admiringly. The chameleon simply warmed his other hand before the fire.
I’m not sure, that as far as that goes, Chammy wasn’t the wisest in that group of friends. Catch Chammy fighting! He would take a hundred years to make up his mind to do it, and then he wouldn’t.
“By-the-bye,” said Shireen, “though human folk will have it that dogs and cats don’t agree, there is plenty of true stories told by naturalists to prove that when a dog and a cat, indeed, I might say any dog and any cat are brought up together, they agree like lambs upon a lea. They will wander about together just as Warlock and Tabby do. Eat out of the same dish without quarrelling, and sleep together on the same mat at night.
“I see,” added Shireen, “that master and Uncle Ben haven’t quite finished their game yet, so while we wait I may as well tell you a little story about cat and dog life. It is mentioned and authenticated in a book called ‘Friends in Fur.’” (Same author.)
This story is told of a cat called the “Czar,” and a doggie whose name was “Whiskey.” And it is doubly à propos because, like Warlock yonder, Whiskey was a Scotch terrier, and he lived in a country village far away in the north of bonnie Scotland. In the same house dwelt the Czar, a splendid, large, rough-haired cat, who, it was said, had been imported from Russia—hence his name.
My friend, Harrison Weir, to whom I am indebted for the speaking illustrations contained in this book, once owned a cat of this breed, and a very handsome cat it must have been. He speaks of it thus in his book called “Our Cats,” page 30; “The mane, or frill, was very large, long and dense, and more of a woolly texture, with coarse short hairs among it, the colour was a dark tabby. The eyes were large and prominent, of a bright orange, slightly tinted with green; the ears large by comparison, with small tufts full of long woolly hair; the limbs stout and short, the tail being very dissimilar as if was short, very woolly and thickly tipped with hair, the same length from base to tip, and much resembled in form that of the British will eat. Its motion was not so agile as that of other cats, nor did it apparently care for warmth, as it liked being out of doors in the coldest weather. Another peculiarity being that it seemed to care little in the way of watching birds for food, neither were its habits like those of the short-haired cats that were its companions.
“It attached itself to no person, as was the case with some of the others, but curiously took a particular fancy to one of my short-haired silver tabbies; the two appeared always together. In front of the fire they sat side by side. If one left the room the other followed. A down the garden paths they were still companions; and at night they slept in the same: box; they drank milk from the same saucer, and fed from the same plate, and, in fact, only seemed to exist for each other. In all my experience I never saw a more devoted couple.”
No two animals in the world could have loved each other more dearly and devotedly than did the Czar and his little wise companion, Whiskey.