Feline Gamble
Stocked up on sustenance for my cats
and stowed it in a cupboard that’s
just outside my kitchen door.
(That’s what I built that cupboard for.)
The only problem seems to be
that closet lacks security,
but that is no problem, is it?
Unless cat burglars choose to visit!!
Go HERE for a kitty serenade.
For # Squares Renew
The prompt today was to write a triolet. A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetrameter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) ABaAabAB. Actually, there was a triolet challenge that I wrote for twice before for NaPoWriMo, once exactly ten years ago in 2013, the first year I did NaPoWriMo, and again in 2020. The poems as well as the cats I eventually “found” back then are below:
A Poem a Minute with a Triolet In it
When first I tried to write this rhyme
I could not seem to make it scan.
In short, I felt less than sublime
when first I tried to write this rhyme;
but then I took the proper time
and proved the truth as other than:
“When first I tried to write this rhyme
I could not seem to make it scan.”
With Workmen Here
The cats have flown, I know not where.
They’ve chosen to remain aloof.
They don’t await me on the stair.
The cats have flown, I know not where.
Not one to steal my favorite chair.
I do not hear them on the roof.
The cats have flown, I know not where.
They’ve chosen to remain aloof.
The assignment for day four of NaPoWriMo 2023 is to write a triolet.
Feline
On the savannah or on my knee,
the difference is one of degree.
That resolution of feline will—
the stroke, the purr, the spring, the kill.
Only the size and prey may change—
the speed of spring, the chase’s range.
Stalking over rock or rill
or perched upon the window sill,
large or small or maned or not,
they are exactly as God has wrought.
Wild or domestic, the fact is that
simply put, a cat’s a cat.
Fatal Wonder
Where’s that naughty kitty been?
Even though it’s nearly ten,
she’s not had a single nibble
of the tuna and the kibble
that I put outside the door
long ago—two hours or more.
If dead from curiosity,
she’s passed her illness onto me!
Dogs and Cats
Cats are more bendable, dogs more dependable.
Cats are more stretchable, dogs much more fetchable.
Dogs rip and tear and their kisses are wetter.
Cats donate hair to your favorite sweater.
Dogs howl at the moon and bark at the neighbors.
Curling and stretching the extent of the labors
of cats whereas dogs display energy plus––
harassing the mailman or chasing a bus.
Both species have four feet, fur and a tail,
fall into two classes: female and male,
and when there is breakage, neither is to blame.
But that’s the extent of the ways they’re the same.
For day 29 of NaPoWriMo 2020, we were to write a poem about our pets.
With Workmen Here
The cats have flown, I know not where.
They’ve chosen to remain aloof.
They don’t await me on the stair.
The cats have flown, I know not where.
Not one to steal my favorite chair.
I do not hear them on the roof.
The cats have flown, I know not where.
They’ve chosen to remain aloof.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a triolet. A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetrameter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) ABaAabAB.
(Click on first photo and then on arrows to enlarge photos.)
Cat Meditation
Entwined in my jacket, spread out on my quilt,
my cats take up the space they frequent with so little guilt.
I wonder what they visualize in their cache of dreams?
Is their sleep as peaceful as it always seems?
The dogs may twitch and bark and reach out paws in times of rest,
but cat sleep is so tranquil. They “do” their sleep the best.
They need no permission to tuck their chores away
and wander inward to their dreams, be it night or day.
Oh that I could rest away from all the world’s mad clatter.
The dreams they dream upon your lap are helpful in the latter—
their purr the loveliest mantra to help your mind unfurl
as you become their mattress, pinned beneath their curl.
Words for the day are purr, visualize, helpful, cache and jacket.
Extended Family
My furry raider sloshed through rain
out to the barn and back again,
but next trip was a passenger
his human cuddled close to her
so both could view the transient
new mother so intently bent
over her bounty, newly born
this blustery, rainy, wind-swept morn.
One more thing born that rainy day
around three homeless ones that lay
snuggled down within the hay
protected from the weather’s fray—
a sense of family between
an old male cat, once feral, mean—
who had been taken in himself
and these three waifs, curled on a shelf
within that barn where I’d found him.
Now both of us discovered them
and that day welcomed them, all three
to our extended family.
Prompt words today are raider, slosh, transient, bounty, and passenger.
Annie as a kitten and almost 19 years later. Seems impossible. The second two photos are of the day the kittens arrived and I found Kukla on the wall in a standoff with Annie, whose meal they were eating! Fiesty little thing. (Photos will enlarge if you click on them.)
Dream’abort’ Annie
Two A.M. and four A.M., six A.M. and eight.
My nineteen-year-old cat is such a reprobate.
She awakens me with yowling to be fed again
or simply for a rubbing over ears and under chin.
My night’s full of awakenings, my days are somewhat muddled.
I try to block the sound of her. I’m bleary and befuddled.
I’m sleep-deprived, exhausted, and yet she is so old,
how can I consign her to the night air and the cold?
I awake at 5 a.m. with no bleats for attention—
that every-other-hour irritating cause of tension.
And yet what mixed emotions this five-hour rest has brought.
Finally, a full-night’s sleep, but Annie I have not!
I knock upon the closet doors, follow every lead.
I mix up her favorite cat foods, but she does not heed
all these invitations—the water and the calls—
the peering under beds, searching the bathrooms and the halls.
I look behind each open door, behind the stereo—
so many hidden spaces where a cat can go.
The old cat’s turned up missing? It’s an oxymoron that
nonetheless is true when applied to my gray cat.
You may find it silly, putting up with such a cat
once so wild and kittenish, so active and so fat.
An outside cat who never deigned to come inside,
Annie chose walls and bushes as places to abide.
Every year she grew more wild and more free,
making an appearance on demand for only me.
Twice a day for meals, she would jump up on the wall
In between, she vanished—not visible at all.
Two years ago, four kittens abandoned at my door
meant that she just left for good, and I saw her no more.
One month later, she returned, hip shattered, skin and bone.
with stomach and liver problems, she was Annie’s ruined clone.
When the vet said nothing could be done, she came to live inside.
I thought, to make her comfortable there until she died,
but two years later, she rules the house and she won’t abide
any other lesser cat to be found inside.
She eats small portions all day long and though she’s lean and spare,
it seems she’s come into her own in my cozy lair.
The problem is, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since then.
For all the constant roarings that disturb the old cat’s den.
If it isn’t food she wants, it seems it is a rub,
or for me to clean her litterbox that’s found inside my tub
that I haven’t used for the two years she’s been here.
I use the guest room shower in lieu of one that’s near.
Sure that she’s died in some dark corner that I cannot see,
I move aside the furniture. I peer on bended knee
beneath the beds. I search each room with a fine-toothed-comb,
but no evidence of her is left within my home.
I’ve thought so often how much easier that it would be
if she would slip away one night and leave her master free.
What a lovely gift it would be for her to give me,
for often I have thought that probably she would outlive me!
The house seems oddly empty. By her water dish, her meal
left uneaten these long hours has started to congeal.
Her gray hairs left upon the rug where she liked to sleep.
Although I’ve loved her absence, it’s true that now I weep.
When the other cats give voice and I decide to heed them,
I get an extra surprise as I go outside to feed them.
When I open up the door, Annie scoots right in,
dashing from the overgrown foliage where she’s been.
Thus ends her great adventure and ends my great travail.
As I sit here writing, I can hear her latest wail.
I guess we’re back to where we were. Annie’s on my lap,
and as long as she is quiet, guess I’ll take a little nap.
Prompts today are mix, follow, knock, silly and solicitude.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 