Tag Archives: Poem about cats

Broken Dreams

17 Replies

 

Annie at 17 years old.

My seventeen year old cat, Annie, has for the past two years been awakening me at various early-morning hours to be fed. It makes no difference if I feed her at midnight or 2 am or whenever I choose to turn in for the night. At 4 or 5 or 6, her piercing yowls shock me awake and there is nothing to be done other than to get up to flop an entire can of Fancy Feast into her feeding bowl. She’s taken over my bathroom with her food and water dishes, her litter tray and her bed, so for two years I’ve showered in the guest shower. This old girl rules my world. Today’s five o’clock awakening gave rise to this poem. 

Broken Dreams

I doused my dream to greet the day, but to my great annoyance.
reality, alas, cannot compete with its flamboyance.
The dream was psychedelic and meandering in its plot.
It had all the excitement that my waking life has not.

Before the day resumes its hold, since night is not yet done,
I’ll return to my pillow and awaken to the sun.
The old cat’s fed, the dogs still sleep and so, with luck, shall I.
Perhaps I’ll find that dream again. At least, I’m going to try.

 

Annie at one month, in my headphone case.

Prompt words today are psychedelic, doused, annoy and day.

Trailings

5 Replies

 

For breaking house rules on noise pollution levels and frequency.

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Cruel Tranquility

13 Replies

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Cruel Tranquility

Welp, I would not have chosen this ending to the story.
It is a sad conclusion—distressing, sad and gory.
The hummingbird, suspended in its helicopter flight,
was brought down from the air with one swift lethal bite.
It was my adorable kitten who stopped its blur of wings.
Tired of scratching posts and batting balls and chasing strings,
she chose a task more difficult—a target ever-moving,
an irresistible challenge but one hardly behooving
a tiny kitten noted for its playfulness and cuteness.
I fear I underestimated her extreme astuteness.
Now she rests in sunlight. Her quarry, limp and torn,
here upon my doormat, I survey, forlorn
over loss of this small creature—its sheer poetry of motion—
as well as this reminder that in garden, air or ocean,
one thing feeds upon another in a constant mortal chain
incredible in beauty, indivisible from pain,
even in a garden where I sought for peace to reign.

 

Prompt words for the day are flight, forlorn, adorable and welp. 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/rdp-sunday-flight/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/27/fowc-with-fandango-forlorn/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/your-daily-word-prompt-adorable-january-27-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/yelp/

Basking

16 Replies

Basking

Cats love of apricity is more than just a fluke.
It is a vital tendency and so we can’t rebuke
our cats for lying prone a lot in any ray of sun.
A cat’s in need of toasting as much as any bun.
If you can imagine a Kardashian without
the flash of any flashbulb, you will without a doubt
be able to imagine a cat without the rays
filtered through venetian blinds, or fully in the blaze
of a scorching summer sun. A cat can withstand all
the heat that we can give them, in summer, winter fall.
And if there is no sun at all, a cat can just make do
with the full attention of a surrogate like you!!!

(Enlarge all photos by clicking on any one.)

Prompt words for today are vital, rebuke, apricity and imagine.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/rdp-monday-vital/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/14/fowc-with-fandango-rebuke/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/your-daily-word-prompt-apricity-january-14-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/imagine/

A Feline Primer

9 Replies

 

Photos may be better viewed by clicking on them to enlarge them.

A Feline Primer

Obsequious’s opposite, a cat has got its pride.
The moment that you put it out, it wants to be inside.
Then once inside it sees something outside it has to play with.
Each thing that you have planned for it is something it can’t stay with.

It knocks against your bottles, setting them astray
to crash upon the tiles, and only then, it may
consent to go outside again until you’ve cleaned the mess.
And cats have no contrition. No impulse to confess.

A dog may raid your garbage, steal your pork chops from the table,
but afterwards they’re guilty and they’ll woo you if they’re able.
But try illuminating cats regarding what they’ve done.
They will survey you blankly and go on to other fun.

A cat has grace and beauty , but very little soul.
It pays its rent with hummingbirds, lizards or a mole,
tiny snakes and bunnies, now and then a bat—
laid out for your viewing, on your front doormat.

Cats move with grace throughout your life, doing what they please.
When you least need their presence, they’re there upon your knees.
They’ll knead your finest tapestry, they’ll upchuck on your floor,
and sometimes when you pet them, they will consent to more.

A cat’s a living work of art, draped across your stool.
“Do unto others as you wish” is their golden rule.
So don’t expect a thank-you as you stroke their ruff.
To be graced with their presence should be thanks enough!

 

The prompts today were bottle, obsequious and illuminate. The links are below:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/23/fowc-with-fandango-bottle/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/obsequious/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/daily-addictions-2018-week-38/illuminate

Cat Placement

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You’ll want to view these full size, so please click on first photo to enlarge and view all.

 

Cat Placement

Have you ever noticed a cat will squeeze
into the smallest space it sees?
It puts itself where it may please—
Within your purse, between your knees.

I do not know what extreme pleasure
cats find within taking their leisure
in places of minuscule measure.
I only know they seem to treasure

tiny cracks they barely fit in,
places they can barely get in.
It’s as though they see the wit in
the unlikeliest place to  sit in.

Where you don’t want her? She’ll be there
on your computer, in your hair.
You have no power, so do not dare
say where to put her derriere!

Your drawers and shelves just suit a cat.
She’ll fit right in wherever she’s at.
Don’t bother to buy her a mat.
She much prefers your favorite hat!

(For forgottenman, who requested cats, cats and more cats.  Here they are, just for you!)

 

Breaking Her Diet

24 Replies

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Breaking Her Diet

I measure her cat food with care from the vat,
but she has such an aptitude, my little cat
for flushing out lizards and others like that.
With delicate paw thrusts, she gives them a bat
’til they barely know where it is that they’re at,
then unleashes her claws for a more severe pat.

Be it lizard or bird or scorpion or rat,
she defeats it as though it were merely a gnat
and lays it out nicely on my front door mat:
one scorpion sting less or a feather for my hat,
then returns to the stool where she formerly sat,
licking her chops, and that’s why she’s so fat!!!

 

The prompts were cat, aptitude and delicate.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/rdp-72-cat/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/11/fowc-with-fandango-aptitude/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/delicate

The Wings of Hummingbirds

16 Replies

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The Wings of Hummingbirds

They break my heart,
these delicate wings of hummingbird
strewn on my porch
with a tiny head displaying one beak,
one eye.

Stripped of adornment,
one slight hummingbird
would hardly make a meal for a cat—
especially one recently fed at my kitchen door. 

Where was I when this travesty
was committed,
carried out by  a cat
true to its nature
and therefore bearing no sin?

I was out back,
 filling the hummingbird feeder left by guests,
though I prefer the natural sight
of hummingbirds feeding at the aloe blossoms
or thunbergia or frangipani.
 
 In the fenced backyard,
the dogs create a territory safe from cats,
but what am I to do about the obelisco plant I love so much in front—
 the one spied every day with a new bloom
as I walk past it to my car? 
What’s to be done for the royal poinciana,
seventeen years old,
spreading its shelter over street and wall and front garden alike?
A dangerous draw in a yard frequented by cats.
What’s to be done?
Defrock the area they roam in to make it hummingbird-free?

That double-pronged nature of cats—
their beauty and their savagery––
displayed so vividly in man himself of late––
 can it be anything but plan?
And to what purpose?
We love the ways of nature but turn our back on half of them,
hoping they will not be demonstrated in our lives.
Until that one last fatal claw of fate descends upon us
and we fall into that scheme, resisting,
but our efforts futile.

Why are endings necessary?
Why must our hearts be broken
 time and again
before they themselves are the breaking thing
and we pass into nature,
undivided, part of a whole both savage and tragic in its beauty. 
Here is the hummingbird whole.
 The cat whole.
Here are we, whole, observing them.
That has to be enough. 
The now. This look.
This touch. This satiation for the moment.
The hummingbird before the slaughter,
the bone before the break.

3:30-5:10 A.M.

19 Replies

Click on first photo to enlarge all and see slide series.


3:30-5:10 A.M.

The calicos are crazy,
my bed a high hill in their racetrack 
that seems to extend down the long hall
from the  living room to here and back.  
They barrel over the bedclothes, over me,
leap to the desktop, rattling the glass case of a 
pre-Columbian clay jug.
The white cat lies serenely licking against my side,
then rises to knead my breast with sharp claws,
nibble fingers as I type.le,∑ß`099w≥. (Her added comment.)
The grey cat has brought something to my bed––a masticated mouse, perhaps.
Quickly, I cover it with the comforter to save it from the cat,
who careens on into another adventure.
I pull back its shroud, dreading what I will reveal,
to find half of the cover of my Xtech Card reader.
From the computer beside me, its guts still hang connected,
the SD card from my new camera still inside.
This is the last time the young cats sleep inside!

 

For Cee’s Which Way challenge..Which Way? Down the hallway and across the bed:

Bearcat: dVerse Poets Open Link Night, May 4, 2018

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daily life color163Bearcat, Bentley and Patti, 1987. The only way you could tell them apart was by their tails. Their mother’s tail bent to the left, Patti’s bent to the right, Bentley’s was zigzag and Bearcat’s was just straightly expressive.  Sweet babies. Bearcat is the one to your left.

Presently, I live with five cats. If you follow my blog, you’ve been seeing them off and on over the past year. The kittens unceremoniously dropped off by my garage door are now about a year old. They mainly reside outside in a sheltered garage in a cushy bed big enough to hold them all or a little cathouse I bought which once held them all but now mainly holds them one-by-one in an equally cushy bed.  

My oldest cat is Annie, now 16 years old and a bit cranky as she rules the roost as an inside cat.  She will allow the other cats inside only if they maintain their distance. About 6 times a day, she yowls her insistence at being served a small meal.  I comply.  She always gets a chin and ear rub first, then she returns to her cushy bed in the large bath/ shower of the bathroom of my bedroom.  Her litter tray and dishes are also there. I’ve pretty much been relegated to the guest bathroom.  

This poem, however, is for Bearcat–upon his death, the only surviving sibling of 4 Blue Burmese kittens that I was foster mother to from the time of their birth. Their mother, a wild cat, moved in with us long enough to give birth and stuck around until the kittens were well beyond weaning before she vanished again into the Redwood Forests of the San Lorenzo Valley near Santa Cruz, CA.  

Only Bearcat was still alive when I moved to Mexico in 2001. Sadly, he drowned in my pool a few months later.  I was devastated.  This was his epitaph, written as a string of kennings for a NaPoWriMo prompt in 2014.

Bearcat
1987-2002
R.I.P.

back lofter
tail wafter
gray bearer
drape tearer
ball loser
lap chooser
bunny slayer
shoelace player
sofa climber
sleep mimer
shadow springer
dragonfly bringer
lizard de-tailer
spider nailer
basement searcher
window ledge percher
tree dweller
mouse smeller
dog chaser
bug caser
door crack peeper
sunbeam sleeper
woods walker
squirrel stalker
rail balancer
prey glancer
shadow catcher
love hatcher
body spinner
heart winner

 

For the dVerse Poets open prompt.