‘Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind…’
CATS II, A.S.J. Tessimond

 

With your lithe delight, at the refuge for strays

and rejects, you and she chose each other

immediately. She had a white tuft

at her throat but otherwise was truly

sable; with Egyptian eyes – emerald,

unblinking, discerning; a sycophantic

charmer; an aloof dowager; a great

mouser, night or day, bearing carcasses

as reward for those that worshipped her.

 

She slipped away like water – though, seemingly,

she had become so street-wise sidling

through whatever wilderness she came from.

With such easy pickings in expansive

suburban gardens so close to fields

maybe she became insouciant.

Her feline subtlety was outmatched

by brute, human force – a car broke her neck.

 

***

 

On the large touch screen in the library,

while we are waiting for Grandma to join us,

you write, using its CAD facility,

many things, including your age – seven

and three quarters – and draw a picture

of your cat, a heart, then write your name

and hers. You turn to smile at me. They were wrong

the writers of Genesis. There is death

as well as birth in Paradise. When we lose

innocence and know the terror in the dark

or the light, we learn to mourn and grieve –

and forget to remember and smile.