Fat Cats

In my family, we’re cat people. We love each cat’s quirky personality, and that they’re often walking contradictions: graceful and dignified one minute, neurotically spazzing out the next; desperately affectionate, then callously indifferent. If I could get one to wear a mood ring, what a light show that would be!

Since cats are in my house and in my thoughts, they often end up in my writing. Below is a poem I recently finished. It was inspired as I put my shoes on to go to work and noticed my cat napping on the bed, oblivious.

Fat Cats


Who hasn’t envied the life of a cat?
To sleep in late and still take naps,
To saunter about, free from all care
With the mien of a rare aristocrat;

To pedicure claws on the leg of a chair,
To suddenly flail at dust in the air,
To yawn and to stretch and indifferently preen,
And then (when pristine) to throw up some hair.