A patient with a suggestion
The idea is not his.
The Cat’s-food-Man comes about a stomach-ache and leaves having changed the Doctor’s career.
📚 Chapter Learning Kit
Animals, Birds, and Dr. Dolittle · Class 7 English · Poorvi
English 3 topics 105 leveled MCQs 51 flashcards 5 games Free
Shared by a Veda teacher · Generated with Veda AI · Oct 2026
⚡ Veda Bites
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Veda Bites are swipeable micro-lessons — each one teaches exactly one idea. Here's a taste from this kit; the app has the full deck.
And still has an opinion
He cannot read a word.
His evidence is the Doctor’s book on cats, read aloud to him by his wife Theodosia, who is the scholar in that house.
Polynesia at the window
Somebody was listening.
Watching the rain and singing a sailor song. She stops singing, which is the story putting an eavesdropper in place.
What makes a compound
The spacing is not the point.
Two words joined so the pair means something neither meant alone. Bird language has a space and is still one.
The meaning test
Could you work it out from the parts?
A blackboard is not any board that is black. When the pair has gone somewhere the words could not, it is a compound.
Three spellings
One of each, from the extract.
Cat’s-food-Man is hyphenated. Bird language is open. Flowerpots is closed. All three are compounds.
📖 Smart notes
What you'll study, topic by topic
1
The Story: Animals, Birds, and Dr Dolittle
A doctor is told by a patient to give up treating people. A parrot then tells him something nobody had thought to mention: animals have a language. What follows is funny, but the joke carries an argument about who is rea…
- The idea does not come from the Doctor. His patient, the Cat’s-food-Man, suggests it, on the grounds that he knows more about animals than t…
- The evidence offered is a book the Doctor wrote about cats, which the man cannot read himself; his wife Theodosia read it to him.
- Polynesia the parrot overhears from the window and takes up the case. Her objection to the existing animal doctors is that none of them are…
~34 min · full explanation, examples & memory tricks in the app
2
Compound Words, and Words that Read Both Ways
English builds new words by pushing two old ones together, and then cannot decide how to spell the result. This topic sorts the three spellings, finds a test that tells a compound from two ordinary words, and ends with w…
- A compound word is made by joining two words so that the result means something neither of them meant alone.
- The extract supplies one of each spelling: Cat’s-food-Man is hyphenated, bird language is open, and flowerpots is closed.
- Spelling is the least important part. Bird language is a compound although it has a space in it, because the pair names one thing.
~33 min · full explanation, examples & memory tricks in the app
3
The Present Perfect, and Talking to a Patient
A tense that looks like the past and behaves like the present. This topic shows why has stopped is a statement about now, why you cannot add yesterday to it, and how the same idea helps when you have to ask a patient wha…
- The present perfect is formed with has or have plus the past participle, the form grammars label V3: she has gone, they have written.
- The book lists three uses: a recently completed action, an action begun earlier and still relevant, and an action whose timing does not matt…
- All three have the same thing in common. The present perfect is a present tense, and every use of it makes a claim about now.
~34 min · full explanation, examples & memory tricks in the app
❓ Leveled MCQ practice
Try the smart MCQs from this kit
105 questions laddered from warm-up to topper-level, each with an explanation. A taste:
The extract comes from a longer story about a doctor who learns to speak to animals, and it has a named author. Writing it was
Beginner
A Hugh Walpole
B Hugh Lofting
C Eliza Cook
D Helen Keller
Show answer & explanation
Hugh Lofting
He invented Doctor Dolittle in letters home to his children during the First World War.
The Cat food Man is a patient of the Doctor, and he arrives with a suggestion rather than an illness. He has come to see the Doctor because
Beginner
A He has a stomach-ache
B He wants a book on cats
C His cat will not eat
D The vet sent him here
Show answer & explanation
He has a stomach-ache
He arrives as a patient and leaves having changed the Doctor’s career.
What reason does he give for the Doctor becoming an animal doctor?
Intermediate
A Animals are easier patients than people are
B He knows more about animals than the nearby vets
C There are no animal doctors at all in the district
D He would be able to charge rather higher fees
Show answer & explanation
He knows more about animals than the nearby vets
His evidence is the Doctor’s book about cats, which he says could have been written by a cat.
How does the Cat’s-food-Man know what is in the Doctor’s book?
Intermediate
A He heard all about it from one of his neighbours
B The Doctor described the whole of it to him
C His wife Theodosia read it aloud to him
D He read the book himself over one winter
Show answer & explanation
His wife Theodosia read it aloud to him
He cannot read at all. Theodosia is the scholar in that house.
🃏 Flashcards
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51 flashcards in this kit — the app reviews them with spaced repetition so the right card returns on the right day.
🎮 Learning games
Play your way through this kit
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Sequence Builder
Categorization
Fact Or Myth
Word Match
Memory Match
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