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Water-cats holed up in the banks, but rising water often forced them out of such dens. A course parallel to the stream bed could well show them the tracks of one of the felines. They started off in a group, Hume leading, with Chambriss treading briskly behind him, Rovald bringing up the rear in the approved trail technique.
There is a commodious cat's house where pets may be boarded during their owner's absence; and a separate house where lost and deserted felines are sheltered, fed, and kindly tended. Since long before Whittington became Lord Mayor of London, indeed, cats have been popular in England: for did not the law protect them?
But there is a fifth quality which all felines have, though I did not mention it before, because a few other animals also have it. This quality is that they have sensitive whiskers. You have noticed the whiskers of an ordinary cat. If the cat were asleep, and you touched a hair of the whiskers, the cat would wake up at once. Why? Because each hair of the whiskers is very sensitive.
Its fleetness, great staying powers, and beautiful strategy when hunted, make it seem probable that it was not without pursuers, other than the felines, among its ancient enemies, long-winded and tenacious of their quarry; and these were perhaps of a type still represented by the wolf or hound-like aguara and aguara-guazu.
You must know that old Goldberg's house in the Rue des Médecins a large apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground floor behind his shop backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended in a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now disused.
So these felines that live in the dense jungles have got used to keeping their tail stretched out like a hand; and the tail is curled upward so as not to rub against the ground. But as the lion usually lives amid scantier vegetation, he does not need to feel his surroundings quite so constantly; and so his tail has lost the power of curling itself upward.
A half-score were grouped about the hogshead and its occupant, with their tails wound round their feet, and were solemnly observing the work of reanimating the stranger. Here and there among taciturn felines of larger growth little spike-tail kits were rolling, cuffing, frolicking and miauing. For a moment the scene seemed a part of his delirium. Parker turned round to survey his benefactor.
The claws move convulsively, the hair stands up. With tails lashing the ground, and necks stretched, ears flattened, lips turned up, they show their formidable fangs in that terrible threatening grimace of fear characteristic of felines. Unseen, I shudder. The situation is disagreeable for both: movement ahead means the death of a beast. Of which? Of both perhaps.
When this was accomplished, Frank gave the felines a fling toward the group at the foot of the stairs. The cats struck one on either side of Professor Gunn's neck, and, as their tails were tied together, they hung there, but not quietly.
How we were beset by strange and terrible beasts. How we barely escaped the cruel fangs of lions and tigers the size of which would dwarf into pitiful insignificance the greatest felines of the outer world. On and on we raced, our one thought to put as much distance between ourselves and Phutra as possible. Ghak was leading us to his own land the land of Sari.
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