Short Stories About Animals: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about animals, from Kashtanka and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi to Tobermory and A Dark Brown Dog, summarised and compared, with the craft each teaches a writer.
Animal stories are the first ones anyone reads and the last a writer masters, because the animal must be an animal and a mirror at once. The writers here range from Chekhov's lost dog to Saki's talking cat, and each knew exactly how much humanity to allow.
The collection begins with dogs, moves through Kipling's jungle and Saki's drawing rooms, and ends with a frog in a California mining camp. Each title links to a page that summarises the story and explains its ending.
The stories
Kashtanka by Anton Chekhov. A young dog loses her drunken master in the street and is taken home by a stranger who turns out to be a circus clown, where she joins a goose, a cat and a pig in an act. On her first night onstage she hears a voice from the gallery.
A Dark Brown Dog by Stephen Crane. A small child in a tenement finds a puppy trailing a rope and brings it home over the family's objections. The father, drunk one evening, picks the dog up by the leg.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling. A young mongoose washed into an English garden in India adopts the family and finds two cobras, Nag and Nagaina, already living there. The fight in the bathroom and the pursuit into the hole are the two set pieces.
Mowgli's Brothers by Rudyard Kipling. A naked child crawls into a wolf's cave and is raised by the pack under the Law of the Jungle, with Baloo and Bagheera to teach him and Shere Khan waiting. At the Council Rock he brings fire.
Tobermory by Saki. At a country house party a guest announces he has taught the cat to talk, and Tobermory, when asked, repeats what he has overheard under the beds. The guests spend the evening trying to poison him.
The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling. A young elephant full of questions is spanked by every relative until he goes to the Limpopo to ask the Crocodile what it has for dinner. The Crocodile shows him, and his nose is never the same.
A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac. A lost soldier in the Egyptian sands shares a cave with a panther and comes to love her spotted fur and her watchfulness. He keeps a dagger in his belt throughout.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain. Simon Wheeler tells a stranger about Jim Smiley, who would bet on anything, and his educated frog Dan'l Webster. A visitor fills the frog with quail shot while Smiley is off fetching a rival.
The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen. A large grey duckling is pecked by the ducks, bitten by the hens and chased from the farm, and spends a winter alone in a frozen marsh. In spring he sees his reflection.
Mumu by Ivan Turgenev. Gerasim, a deaf-mute serf, rescues a drowning puppy and raises her into the one creature in Moscow that understands him. His mistress orders the dog gone, and Gerasim carries out the order in his own way.
Reading them together
The collection's argument is that an animal in fiction is a test of the humans around it. The child in A Dark Brown Dog and Gerasim in Mumu are measured by what they will do for a dog; the country house guests by what they will do to a cat; Smiley's rival by a handful of quail shot. Kipling alone lets the animals judge each other, and his jungle has a Law because the humans in it do not.
Kashtanka and The Ugly Duckling make a pair on recognition: one animal returns to a poor home when she hears her name, the other finds a new one when he sees his face.
If you want to write about animals
What writers can take from this
- Read Kashtanka and A Dark Brown Dog together for two dogs and two very different children.
- Kipling has three stories here; read The Elephant's Child aloud and the other two silently.
- Tobermory is the funniest story in the whole collection; watch how Saki keeps the cat entirely feline.
- Mumu is the saddest; it pairs with The Ugly Duckling as two answers to what an outcast does with love.
- The Jumping Frog is a story about how a story is told; notice Simon Wheeler more than the frog.
Try it yourself
Write a story from inside an animal's senses, in which the animal understands exactly one human word and the whole plot turns on when it is spoken.
Questions
What is the best short story about animals?
Kashtanka is the writers' choice, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the readers'. Tobermory is the funniest, and Mumu the one most often called a masterpiece.
Which short stories about animals are good for students?
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, The Elephant's Child, The Ugly Duckling and The Celebrated Jumping Frog are staples for younger readers. Kashtanka and A Dark Brown Dog suit older students.
Which classic animal story is the shortest?
A Dark Brown Dog, at about fifteen hundred words. The Celebrated Jumping Frog and Tobermory are each around two thousand.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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