THE RING-TAILED CAT
THE children missed Fuzzy-Wuzz these days, the more so as Dapple, the
fawn, had to spend the winter in the barn with the cows. They could not
have her indoors, of course.
The Ranger found a litter of ring-tailed kittens. The kits are
generally born in June, and this was October, so that they were half
grown. Their mother and the two larger kittens ran away as the Ranger
reached into their den in the hollow tree, but the littlest one was not
quick enough.
Now the Ranger remembered his grandfather telling of the days of
Forty-nine, when he joined the gold rush to California. He had had a
ring-tailed cat for a pet.
Building his rude log cabin somewhere about these very mountains while
he washed the precious metal out of the gravel of the creek beds, he
noticed that his supplies were being pilfered, and thinking it must be
a fox, he set a trap.
He was awakened in the middle of the night by the most curious
sound,--half the bark a small dog makes, and half yowl. Looking to
see what he had in his trap, that he could put it out of its misery,
he found an animal that he at first took to be a house cat. Then he
noticed that it was longer, and had a much longer tail, and shorter
legs. The most curious part of it was that the tail was striped black
and white, like a ’coon’s. Its face, too, was pointed like that of a
raccoon. Instead of the mischievous eyes peering from a black mask that
a ’coon seems to have, this animal had large, gentle looking eyes and
looked scared to death.
He learned later that it was a ’coon cat, or civet, more commonly
called the ring-tail cat.
“There, there, pussy,” he soothed her, as he released her from the trap
and carried her into his cabin. “You just come on in here and have some
fish, and we’ll bury the hatchet. I need a cat to keep the field mice
out of my grub,” and he straightway adopted her.
She was easy to tame. She generally slept all day and chased mice all
night,--of which an abundance were attracted by his pantry shelf. She
also showed her likeness to the raccoon by her fondness for fruit and
sugar.
The Ranger, remembering this pet his grandfather used to tell about,
decided to take the ring-tail cat home to the children. And my, how
pleased they were! At first they had to keep her in a cage, or she
would have run away. And when they placed food before her, she would
cower to the furthest corner as if terrified.
After a couple of days of this, the Ranger told his boy that if he
really meant to tame her, he would have to make her eat from his hand.
After that, though she had a pan of drinking water in her cage, she got
no food till she was willing to eat it out of his hand.
For several days she refused to touch what he offered her. Then the
tempting odor of a piece of wild goose liver held between the boy’s
fingers proved too much for her and she came up and ate it while he
held it. A few days more and they could let her out of her cage.
Ring-tail, as he named her, soon became the pet of the household,--to
Clickety-Clack’s disgust, for the owl liked attention too. She would
play like any other kitten, and she ate all kinds of table scraps, figs
and prunes being her especial fondness.
She was no end graceful, was Ring-tail, with her long, plumy tail and
her pointed face. And she responded to all the old kitten tricks, from
chasing her tail to wrestling with one’s hand, tooth and claw. She
craved affection, too, like any house cat.
There was just one trouble. They could not trust her in the same room
with the canary.
Fuzzy-Wuzz had never bothered the bird, for though he could climb, he
was too clumsy to reach into the cage as it hung there above the window
box. But with Ring-tail it was different.