Comprehension Open-ended
Read the passage carefully and answer the questions in complete sentences.
| She could not have arrived at a worse time. The house was packed with cats, about a dozen in all. A blue jay occupied the front porch, an orphaned squirrel, the back porch. The only territory unclaimed was the guest room. In it, on the bed in a cardboard box filled with hay, Poppy became an unlikely guest. She had been found lying in a roadside ditch, a tiny baby skunk, fuzzy-furred, soaking wet and very sick. She was burning with fever, shaking with chills and her skin was a mass of scabs. A skunk’s scent glands are functional soon after birth, so young as she was, she would have given me a good gassing. However, she allowed me to force pills down her throat and soak her skin with hand lotion. For a few days, she stayed in the box. As soon as she got stronger, things soon started to vanish – a glove, then a handkerchief, a towel, several spoons and even a small pillow. She had hidden all this stuff under the hay. The spoons reappeared every once in a while, as a vastly improved Poppy played with them with her paws like a kitten. She played contentedly by the hour until she discovered something she liked better – my fingers. Whenever they came near her, she would seize them and nibble them. It delighted her so much to see them wriggle that she would end up standing on her head. I could not keep her company all the time and it became obvious that living alone in the great guest room bored her. Friends advised me to have her descented so that she could be given the freedom of the house. Sooner or later, something was sure to annoy Poppy and there would be an explosion. I had no intention of keeping Poppy. When she was old enough, we could go walking in the woods and she would need to get used to living there. Taking away her only means of defence would make that impossible. | 5 10 15 20 |
1. Why did the author say, “She could not have arrived at a worse time” (line 1)?
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2. What did the author mean by “The only territory unclaimed was the guest room” (line 3-4)?
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3. Why was Poppy considered an “an unlikely guest” (line 5)?
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4. Which phrase in the passage tells you that Poppy has a lot of old wounds?
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5. Why did Poppy not give the author a good gassing when she forced the pills down her throat?
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6. What does the phrase “vastly improved Poppy” (line 15-16) tell us?
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7. Why did the author not take her friends’ advice to have Poppy descented?
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8. What “explosion” (line 24) was the author talking about?
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9. What was Poppy’s only means of defence?
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10. Which sentence in the passage shows that the author was an animal lover?
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