Possible Clues:

• Tailless felines
• Tailless pets
• Islanders with little or nothing to look back on?
• Pets named for their British Isles origin
• With him and his ten pets there is no end of them
• Thereby hangs a tale? Not for them by the sound of it
• Thereby hangs a tale, but not for them, by the sound of it
• Thereby does not hang a tale, by the sound of them
• An Isle of Man race
• And thereby hangs a tale? Not by the sounds of, for him and his ten pets