A Rough Shaking by George MacDonald

I need hardly say that by this time all the beasts with any friendliness in them had for Clare a little more than their usual amount of that feeling. But there was one between whom and him -- I prefer _who_ to _which_ for certain animals -- a real friendship had begun at once, and had grown and ripened rapidly till it was strong on both sides. Clare's new friend -- and companion as much as circumstance permitted -- was the same whose lonely gambols had so much attracted him the night he first entered the menagerie. The animal, whom Clare had taken for a young lion -- without being so far wrong, for he has often been called the American lion -- was the puma, or couguar, peculiar to America, with a relation to the jaguar, also American, a little similar to that of the lion to the tiger. But while the jaguar is as wicked a beast as the tiger, the puma possesses, in relation to man, far more than the fabulous generosity of the lion. Like every good creature he has been misunderstood and slandered, but a few have known him. He has doubtless degenerated in districts, for as the wild animal must gradually disappear before the human, he cannot help becoming in the process less friendly to humanity; but an essential and distinctive characteristic of the puma is his love for the human being -- a love persistent, devoted, and long-suffering.

Between such an animal and Clare, it is not surprising that friendship should at once have blossomed. He stroked the paw of the Indian lion the first morning, but the day was not over when he was stroking the cheek of the puma; while all he could do with the grizzly at the end of the month was to feed him a little on the sly, and get for thanks a growl of the worse hate. There are men that would soonest tear their benefactors, loathing them the more that they cannot get at them. I suspect that in some mysterious way Glum Gunn and the bear were own brothers. With the elephant Clare did what he pleased -- never pleasing anything that was not pleasing to the elephant.