Dear Cat

Our orange tabby cat, Nilli, loves me. About the only time she’s calm is when she’s on my lap, purring, kneading, and (Lord knows why) licking my right arm. The *right* one, mind you, not the left. The anxiety meds we mix with her cat food take the edge off, but she’s still wound pretty tight.

Awhile ago, I read Christina Rosetti’s poem “A Summer Wish” and was intrigued by its form. The poem uses seven line stanzas in the following meter and rhyme scheme:

Iambic trimeter (A)
Iambic dimeter (B)
Iambic trimeter (A)
Iambic trimeter (A)
Iambic dimeter (C)
Iambic trimeter (B)
Iambic trimeter (C)

An iambic foot has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Trimeter is three feet in a line, dimeter is two feet in a line. The letters show which lines rhyme (A with A, B with B, etc).

I copied down the form and kept it tucked away so I could use it in my own poem sometime, and there it sat for over a year. But last month, I decided to do something with it. For whatever reason, as I thought about using the form, I also found myself thinking about Nilli, and “Dear Cat” was born (now that’s a strange love child, LOL).

Since my fourth book, The Anonymity of Waiting, will have its share of cat poems when I self-publish it in the near-ish future, “Dear Cat” will be included in a future book, which I am starting to compile.

Dear Cat
for Nilli

Dear cat, I wonder at
     your thoughts when you
stare out the sliding glass
at sunlit swirls of gnats,
     or blades of grass
that quiver as the noon
breeze makes its lazy pass;

at sparrows hopping through
     spruce needles, or
butterflies that stumble through
the air like beauti-fools.
     Are you like me?
Are your thoughts fraught with your
opinions and judgy

conclusions about what
     you see?  Or does
the world roll by like a
reel as you sit and watch,
     just taking it
all in for what it is,
not thinking what it ought

to be?  Your placid gaze
     says it all.  You
don’t over analyze
or wander reason’s maze
     hoping to find 
the cheese of rational proof
craved by the human mind.

Your orange tabby coat
     incarnates the sun
in which it soaks, complete
with rays that stripe and heat
     you from head to
tail.  It seems that not one
thing could agitate you.


But then you start; you’re on
     your feet, ears back,
back arched, and all claws drawn.
For there, out on the lawn,
     stalks satan’s spawn,
the one who raises hackles
and comes to prey upon

all peace and decency:
     Fluffy, the next
door neighbor’s cat, cleaning
her shag carpet coat’s creamy 
     locks.  My eyes grow
wide as your haunches flex,
and with a yowl you throw

yourself at the glass, leaving
     spittle spattered
all over it.  Racing
at the glass again, you fling
     yourself into
the pane and, having battered
just your own thick skull, you

thump to the ground and stay
     there.  Fluffy looks
around blandly, unfazed,
and takes a meandering way
     to the fence.  Leaping,
she lights on the top, and walks
along, finally slipping

from the fence into the yard
     next door.  Dear cat,
your mind is an alarm 
bell; I see that now. Hardly
     used, it just hangs,
still and silent ‘til it’s 
tripped and spastically rings.

The only other time
     it bursts into
clanging is when it’s time
to dish a can of white
     fish broth for lunch,
or maybe shrimp and tuna
flavored pate. You munch

on kibble throughout the day,
     and still find room 
for “snackrifices” laid
in your puzzle-box tray.
     Your mind’s a dinner
bell too.  Were that not true,
you’d be a lot thinner.