the sachet kitten

image from excerpted publication and public domain

 . . . Skunks make unique and interesting pets and many lovers of animals find delight in their study. They are extremely healthy and hardy in all climates. The various pet stock associations. . .  have lately become interested in the skunk. Many of their members have started to breed the skunk. It is an animal which can be kept in very small quarters in cities or suburbs as it is naturally so cleanly in its habits. It is a wonderful animal to study as it is gentle and fond of human company and in some respects it can teach the human species very good lessons. The skunk has self respect and will resent any unseemly constraint of his rights as he understands them, at first by the mild protest of stamping his feet, and finally, as a last resort, by firing upon an agressor in self defense if he has not been disarmed.

   He has patience and will tolerate under protest considerable encroachment on his right before using violence. He is of an inquisitive turn of mind and wishes to understand all that goes on around about him. Any new appointments about the place are carefully investigated by him. . .One writer has naively remarked that the more he saw of people the better he liked skunks. He was in some respects a shrewd observer.
   Skunks will breed in very close confinement when made very tame as they always are when kept as pets for they then receive much attention. They can be handled in the arms just like kittens. They are good mousers. They are astoundingly beautiful.

-- from Frederick Montgomery Holbrook, Skunk Culture for Profit (Skunk Development Bureau, 1915) pp. 106-110 passim.