Grounded in his decision after Jonnie’s death.
He thought Camusfearna, surrounded by water, would be suitable for keeping an otter instead of another dog.
Grounded in the Basra sequence.
He goes to Basra to visit the British Consulate and collect and answer mail from Europe. He waits five days for mail delayed in transit and then several more days before a friend obtains the otter.
Grounded in the delivery and Maxwell’s language.
A friend arranges for Arabs from the marshes to bring an otter, which Maxwell finds in a sack in his bedroom. He quickly likes it, calling it ‘a thraldom to otters’ and describing the creature with fascinated affection as it emerges and explores.
Grounded in the species-identification note.
Zoologists identified it as a previously unknown subspecies and named it Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli after Gavin Maxwell.
At first Mij remained distant and slept away from Maxwell; friendliness developed later.
aloof and indifferent
Grounded in the airline instructions.
Because the airline would not carry animals, Mij was to travel in a box no more than eighteen inches square, placed on the floor at Maxwell’s feet on the flight.
Grounded in the crisis before departure.
He tore at the lining until it was shredded, injured himself and covered the box with blood, then forced part of his body through an opening.
Grounded in Mij’s indoor play.
He placed a small ball on the sloping lid of Maxwell’s suitcase, let it roll down and rushed to intercept it, repeating the game for long periods.
Grounded in Maxwell’s comparison of repeated routes.
Compulsive habits are repeated actions a person or animal feels driven to perform. Schoolchildren in London repeatedly stepped on the centre of each paving block or touched every seventh upright of a railing. Mij insisted on galloping along the low wall beside the school on his walks.
Grounded in the zoological description.
Otters belong to the mustellines, the same broad family as weasels, stoats, minks and badgers.
Grounded in the ‘barrage of conjectural questions’.
People guessed many animals, including a baby seal, squirrel, walrus, hippo, beaver, bear cub and leopard. Few recognised him as an otter, showing how unfamiliar his species was in London.
The four parts follow the poem’s extended cat metaphor.
(i) Sandburg imagines the fog as a cat. (ii) It arrives quietly and softly ‘on little cat feet’. (iii) ‘It’ refers to the fog. (iv) He does not use a direct ‘like a cat’ simile; he creates an extended metaphor. The fog comes on cat feet, sits on silent haunches watching the harbour and city, and then moves on silently and independently, all actions associated with a cat.
The line endings—fog, feet, looking, city, haunches, on—do not form a recurring rhyme pattern.
No fixed rhyme scheme is present. ‘Fog’ is free verse: its six short lines use the natural pauses and quiet movement of the extended metaphor rather than a regular rhyme or metre.