let go yet. She
kept her teeth in the neck until the selector snipped the rest of the
snake off her. The bits were carried out on a shovel to die at sundown.
Mary Ann had a good drink of milk, and then got her tongue out and
licked herself back into the proper shape for a cat; after which she
went out to look for that snake's mate. She found it, too, and dragged
it home the same evening.

Cats will kill rabbits and drag them home. We knew a fossicker whose cat
used to bring him a bunny nearly every night. The fossicker had rabbits
for breakfast until he got sick of them, and then he used to swap them
with a butcher for meat. The cat was named Ingersoll, which indicates
his sex and gives an inkling to his master's religious and political
opinions. Ingersoll used to prospect round in the gloaming until he
found some rabbit holes which showed encouraging indications. He would
shepherd one hole for an hour or so every evening until he found it was
a duffer, or worked it out; then he would shift to another. One day he
prospected a big hollow log with a lot of holes in it, and more going
down underneath. The indications were very good, but Ingersoll had no
luck. The game had too many ways of getting out and in. He found that he
could not work that claim by himself, so he floated it into a company.
He persuaded several cats from a neighbouring selection to take shares,
and they watched the holes together, or in turns--they worked shifts.
The dividends more than realised even their wildest expectations, for
each cat took home at least one rabbit every night for a week.

A selector started a vegetable garden about the time when rabbits were
beginning to get troublesome up country. The hare had not shown itself
yet. The farmer kept quite a regiment of cats to protect his garden--and
they protected it. He would shut the cats up all day with nothing to
eat, and let them out about sundown; then they would mooch off to the
turnip patch like farm-labourers going to work. They would drag the
rabbits home to the back door, and sit there and watch them until the
farmer opened the door and served out the ration of milk. Then the cats
would turn in. He nearly always found a semi-circle of dead rabbits and
watchful cats round the door in the morning. They sold the product of
their labour direct to the farmer for milk. It didn't matter if one cat
had been unlucky--had not got a rabbit--each had an equal share in the
general result. They we