home that night, Mr. Savage told me that he had killed fifty or more
in three or four years. They will get in a draw full of
tumble-grass, on a cold day when quail don't like to fly, and stay
right with them; and even after feeding on two or three, they will
lie and watch, and when the covey moves, they move. When eating time
comes around they are at it again, and to a covey of young birds
they are sure death to the whole covey.

Well, Will told me never to overlook a house-cat that I found as far
as a quarter of a mile from a farm or ranch, for if they have not
already turned wild, they are learning how easy it is to hunt and
live on game, and are almost as bad. We found Mr. Black-and-White
Hunter had eaten two quail just before we killed him that evening. I
would rather not write what Mr. Savage said when we found the
remains of a partly-eaten bird.

My advice is, don't let tame cats get away when found out hunting;
for the chances are they have not seen a home in months, and maybe
years,--and say! but they do get big and bad. When you meet one,
give it to him good, and don't let your dog run up to him until he
is out for keeps. I learned afterwards that was how Will knew it was
a cat. Queen had learned to back off and call for help on cats some
years before.

In the New York Zoological Park, we have had troubles of our own with
marauding cats. They establish themselves in a day, and quickly learn
where to seek easy game and good cover. In the daytime they lie close in
the thick brush, exactly as tigers do in India, but if not molested for
a period of days, they become bold and attack game in open view. One
bird-killing cat was so shy of man that it was only after two weeks of