Picture Dictionary & Books : Free for English Learner!

He goes under the bed.

Ben screams, "Get him! Kill him! He's got my Brownie!"

He's in a frenzy, and I don't blame him.

It does make you mad to see your pet get hurt.

I run for a broom to try to poke Cat out, but it isn't any use.

Meanwhile, Ben finds Redskin safe in the box, and he scoops him back into the lunchbox.

Finally, we move the bed, and there is Cat poking daintily with his paw at Brownie.

The salamander is dead.

Ben grabs the broom and bashes Cat.

Cat hisses and skids down the hall.

"That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him! What'd you ever have him for?"

I tell Ben I'm sorry, and I get him a little box so he can bury Brownie.

You can't really blame Cat too much—that's just the way a cat is made, to chase anything that wiggles and runs.

Ben calms down after a while, and we go back to the encyclopedia to finish looking up about the Red Eft.

"I don't think Brownie was really ready to lay eggs, or he would have been in the pond already," I say.

"Tell you what. We could go back some day with a jar and try to catch one in the water."

That cheers Ben up some.

He finishes taking notes for his report and tracing a picture, and then he goes home with Redskin in the lunchbox.

I pull out the volume for C.

Cat. Family, Felidae, including lions and tigers. Species, Felis domesticus.

I start taking notes: "'The first civilized people to keep cats were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before Christ....

Fifty million years earlier the ancestor of the cat family roamed the earth, and he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores.

The Oligocene cats, thirty million years ago, were already highly specialized, and the habits and physical characteristics of cats have been fixed since then.

This may explain why house cats remain the most independent of pets, with many of the instincts of their wild ancestors.'

I call Ben up to read him this, and he says, "You and your lousy carnivore! My salamander is an amphibian, and amphibians are the ancestors of all the animals on earth, even you and your Cat, you sons of toads!"

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