the tigress' pet dog, 1819

The Jardin des Plantes at one time housed the royal zoo.  I am quite sure the cages were abysmal, so I can imagine the tigress's little friend brightened her days.
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Tigress and Dog.
In the year 1819, I saw in the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, a tigress, with a little dog in her den, which she treated with the greatest fondness. The mode in which the animals of that menagerie are fed and cleaned, to ensure security, is always to leave alternately the den at one end of the row empty, the whole suit having a communication with each other by a door betwixt every cell. The keepers, after cleaning this empty apartment, place in it the animal's proportion of food, and then draw open the door, when the beast enters, and the door is then shut. This tigress always allowed the little dog to precede her, and to choose his share of the meat, and make his meal before she touched it. If any person offered to lay hands on the dog, she growled in the most fearful manner. At one time, the dog was taken from her, and allowed to go at liberty, when she became so melancholy for its loss that she refused to eat. They were therefore obliged to return her little favourite to confinement.

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Biographical Sketches and Authentic Anecdotes of Quadrupeds, Thomas Brown (Glasgow: A. Fullarton & Co., 1831), pp. 290-1