A toad sings amorously, his throat full of pearls - Colette's animals

"A little later comes a hedgehog, a muddle-headed, scatter-brained creature, bold yet easily frightened, who scuttles along in a nearsighted way, goes into the wrong hole, eats greedily, is frightened of the car and makes a noise like a young pig on the loose. The gray cat hates him, but hardly ever goes near him, and her green eyes grow bitter when she looks at him." (23)

That hedgehog and cat live in Colette's Retreat from Love (1907), where we also find a toad, a bat, a dog, a crab, and probably other critters that I have forgotten. I read this novel fifteen years ago, I would guess, and I had to remind myself what it was about - a bunch of crisscrossing love affairs, lovely but diaphanous, hard to remember.

But I remembered that hedgehog, and the bitter cat. And the toad, definitely the toad:

"under the five loose stone steps a toad sings amorously, his throat full of pearls. At dusk he drives away the last midges, the little grubs which live in the cracked stones. From time to time he looks at me deferentially, but with reassurance, then - leaning one hand against the wall in human fashion he stands up to swallow - I hear the nop sound of his wide mouth. When he rests he moves his eyelids in such a pensive and lofty way that I haven't yet dared say a word to him." (22-3)

I found it interesting that Chingiz Aitmatov had been a veterinarian, which certainly informed his writing about animals. Aitmatov reminded me of Colette, oddly. I mean, her world of Parisian courtesans seems pretty far removed from the Kazakhstani steppes. Who knows why she wrote about animals so much, and so well? She, like Aitmatov, observed their world carefully, and made it part of her book. Few novelists do that.

Or am I wrong? Juvenile novels are menageries, right, definitely. I remember reading all sorts of animal stories - raccoons as pets, bears as pets, dogs and more dogs. I don't remember too well if any of them were that well written. I'll think some more. I had not really planned to write about this; maybe it won't go anywhere.

Suggestions, though, are most welcome - who, novelist or otherwise, was good at writing about animals?

Quotations from the Margaret Crosland translation, the only English version, I think.