From ‘Sim-sam the Mink‘, The Spectator, 31 July 1915:
Sim-sam’s bath was the spectacle that revealed him at his very best. Watching him glide and twist and loop the loop under water with the utter ease of a fish made you see the reason for the webbed toes, the powerful short, double-jointed legs that bent in any direction indifferently, and for the slim, lithe body with its rippling muscles. Sim-sam, you perceived, was built expressly for quick movement under water—movement far different from the clumsy-looking bopping gallop that was his best gait on land. A bath was his supreme enjoyment. It filled him with the highest spirits. After he had climbed out, rubbed himself dry upon rugs or pillows or trouser-legs—rolling and tumbling in a very frenzy of the toilet—he would spring and dash about the house like a gigantic festive flea, making the passages echo with “Chu-chu-chu” and squeaks. It was never safe to leave liquid within Sim-sam’s reach, for he would bathe in any dish or teapot or vase of flowers. On one memorable occasion he swam in greasy dishwash, upset a sugar-bowl to dry his fur in what he thought was sand, and removed the sticky mess by vigorous rubbing upon the blankets in which Lucas slept. On another he was removed from the flour-bin, a Pierrot figure of absurdity, a mirthful mink whose every hair was white as a circus clown’s.
• • • •
And now Death had come! The house was silent; the small comrade gone. Mrs. Lucas, sewing on the veranda in the late afternoon, felt bitterly. She was upon the verge of tears (for a dead mink!), and as she wondered at her own emotion—at the unsuspected hold a small wild animal could get upon human affection—she heard a tiny noise that sounded like the tinkling together of two light silver coins, a noise she knew. And looking round in shocked astonishment, she saw a little upright figure on the veranda floor, a hungry little wisp of fur with bright boot-button eyes, begging prettily for meat. Then Sim-sam yawned, for he had slept nine hours underneath the porch.
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