MMM Publications 1944                                          Ireland                                24.10.2026     

Nigeria: Today I must tell you about Jimmy – our pet of pets.

He was a “fruit-eating civet cat.” He was a beautiful little creature about the size of a squirrel and having an enormously ling furry tail over a yard long. He had a coat of beautiful light grey fur with two dark spots in the middle of his back. He had fur on the back of his paws, but the front part of his paws had soft cool pads. He could grasp things like a monkey.

He had lost his mother before he was able to look after himself. I tried to feed him with milk from a pipette, but he refused, so I was obliged to look for a foster mother. Our dog Kumba had had the misfortune to lose her pups and Jimmy filled the aching corner in her mother’s heart. She took to him at once and gave him all her attention and fed him. He liked being fed and being cuddled and kept warm by his new mother but like most young animals he hated being washed.

But Kumba was a good mother and did not believe in spoiling children so she used her paw firmly on the long tail and would lick him all over, paying no attention to his angry squeaks.

Soon Jimmy was able to get around everywhere and sad to relate he developed an insatiable curiosity. It was his habit to climb on to the table and poke his nose into everything. If it was eatable, invariably he sampled it. One day he found a bottle of quinine tablets. Quietly he had the bottle on its side and the cork pulled out in no time. Then he shook out some of the quinine tablets and took a big bite. The next minute he was tearing around the room spitting as hard as he could in the vain hope of getting rid of the quinine.

He was a very affectionate little creature and would come when he was called. He ate almost any kind of food but was not destructive. He loved small pieces of meat, fruit or cockroaches. The African cockroaches are enormous beetles about four times the size of the ones in Ireland and they are great pests. They get into drawers and cupboards and seem to eat anything softer than cast iron. Jimmy was a great asset at keeping them down. He would pounce on them and crunch them up with gusto!