Song For Mourning a Cat

You became wild, you became a street cat!

Did you not fly around my heart like a nightingale?

No longer is your beauty a revelation,

Your face no longer a place of worship.

Your former tenderness grew coarse,

What were your fineries, became torn…

How can your beauty betray itself,

How can wine turn to quinine?

I’m afraid for you – decorated with jewelry –

And now you’ve become like a gypsy

Prostituting herself.

An existentialist cat roaming the streets at night –

But who’s still dreaming of you? 

– nizar qabbani

To A Cat

Stately, kindly, lordly friend,

Condescend

Here to sit by me, and turn

Glorious eyes that smile and burn,

Golden eyes, love’s lustrous meed,

On the golden page I read.

All your wondrous wealth of hair,

Dark and fair,

Silken shaggy, soft and bright

As the clouds and beams of night,

Pays my reverent hand’s caress

Back with friendlier gentleness.

Dogs may fawn on all and some

  As they come;

You, a friend of loftier mind,

Answer friends alone in kind. 

Just your foot upon my hand

Softly bids it understand.  

-Algernon Charles Swinburne

Thanks, yet again, for the wonderful picture Margaret!

Bukowski, reincarnated as stray cat, living in Parkdale!

There’s a bluebird in my heart

That wants to get out

But I’m too tough for him

I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody

See you

There’s a bluebird in my heart

That wants to get out

But I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke

And the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

Never know that

He’s

In there

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.

then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

"Bluebird" by Charles Bukowski, 1977.

Thank you to my best friend Sarah for helping me help this Bukowski cat show his softer side and taking pictures of it.  I think Bukowski woulda liked Parkdale.

when first we faced and touching showed

When first we faced and touching showed

there stood how much our meeting owed

to other meetings, other loves

The decades of a different life

Belonged to others, lavished, lost

Nor could I hold you hard enough

To call my years of hunger strife

Back for your mouth to colonize

Admitted: and the pain is real

But when did love not try to change

The world back to itself – no cost

No past, no people else at all –

Only what meeting made us feel

So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?

Pictures by Margaret Kwan, poetry by Phillip Larkin.

Black against White; or, The Snow-Shoer; or, The Winter Cat.

The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . .
It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
Down golden-windowed walls.

We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,

We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.

 

(The House of Dust, Conrad Aiken)

The Tiger.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

in the forests of the night

what immortal hand or eye

could frame thy fearful symmetry

In what distant deeps or skies

burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art

could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat

What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears 

and water'd heaven with their tears

did He smile His work to see?

did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

in the forests of the night

what immortal hand or eye

could frame thy fearful symmetry

- William Blake, 1757 - 1827

you are my sister and i love you

Sonya is a Cuban baby cat-cat who deserves love.  She was named in memory of Sonja, a Hungarian farm cat who recently went to the woods to die alone - as kitties are wont to do. Sisters across the world. How they feel about each other can be best expressed by the words of Antony Hegarty's song, "You Are My Sister".

We were born so innocent - so full of need. 

At times we were friends and at times I was so cruel...

but tonight I ask for you to watch me as I sleep

I was so afraid of the night. You seemed to move through the places that I feared.

You lived inside my world so softly, protected only by the kindness of your nature.

The way we laughed, the way we experienced pain. Faces, worlds, no one else will ever know!

You are my sister, and i love you. May all of your dreams come true. I want this for you! I see them coming true.

Oh, what's this?

Is this my heart? and is it thumping?

Oh, my heart, oh, there you are! I'll stop hunting.

I love S's dainty little hand reflected in the door window.

cats fill me with poetry

Who needs photoshop when one is a MS Paint wizard?

This majestic hairless catcat was captured by Steph's iphone in front of Trinity-Bellwoods park in the loving clasp of his owner.  He had remarkably strong paws, and since he was declawed he could cling on to your finger like a leaf.  It felt so nice holding onto this baby's hand for dear life!

Excerpts from "The Wilderness" by Carl Sandburg, 1918. Thank you to Tina for the tip.

it was the way i saw wolves tracks

"it was not the hunting that led me there - it was the ice in my fur and the wind from the western mansion and the mist from the eastern lodge. it was the night's long lying."

If I were committed to Mr Potter's Madhouse, I hope I'd have my cat Jeoffry with me too.

Christopher Smart was an English poet who in 1750 developed "a form of religious mania that compelled him to continuous prayer... from that time onward, Smart was confined, with one brief intermission, until 1763, in Mr. Potter's Madhouse in Bethnal Green.  During his confinement he wrote the lengthy manuscript of Jubilate Agno. Smart is also known for his distinctive and often anthologized homage to his cat, Jeoffry. This poem comes from the surviving fragments of Jubilate Agno."

Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, [For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry]
by Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary. 
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel 
            from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest. 
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion. 
For he is of the Lord's poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry!
            poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better. 
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection. 
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven to sustain the 
            bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.