Cats I Have Known

there’s the cat with nine tails
there’s the cat with nine lives
there’s the cat that got my tongue
there’s the cat that is out of the bag
there’s the cat that curiosity killed

Percy was our first
a long-haired white
a tour bus for fleas
he led a long and lazy life
those fleas didn’t get around much.

Next came Sweeney
who left us too early
killed by a car
in the back lane.

Then Sasha the hunter
who brought us daily gifts
of dead birds and mice
and fought an ongoing battle
for ownership of the back yard
with two blue jays.
Sasha, too, fell foul of a car
in the back lane,
I heard about it
while checking into a Holiday Inn
somewhere in Alabama,
the peroxide permed ladies
at the front desk
passed me a note
which simply said:
“Sasha is dead”.
“Sasha is a cat”, I explained,
seeing the look of concern
on their powdered faces,
this did nothing to alleviate the gloom
I couldn’t get my room keys fast enough.
That was enough catastrophe for us,
Sasha’s ashes now rest in an urn
nestled in the bowl of the cherry tree
in the back yard
where she is visited frequently
by her former prey.

Photo : graffiti in Getsemani, Colombia

Taking part in Anmols’ prompt “all things feline” Over at dverse