Tobermory Unriddled (kinda)

"If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast," said Clovis, "he deserved all he got."

While the theme of this is incredibly vague and ambiguous, I suppose it could have something to do with not pushing luck??? I honestly am having a lot of trouble digging out any meaning of this story. For tone, I would say it is kind of a nonchalant bizarreness. Nobody really finds it astonishing that a cat can talk and everybody just accepts it. Also, the tone has a very dry humor sprinkled around it. Cornelius' death is almost a joke as an elephant killed him. It kind of points at a cartoon-like image of a man being squished like a pancake by a monstrous mastodon.