The Prize Cat

Franz Marc, Two Cats

This is the day when Cat Musings, usually a rather doggy site, celebrates its namesake, the Cat. This is on behalf of T., and since I can't put flowers on his grave, this year it's a poem.

The Prize Cat

E.J. Pratt (1882-1964)

Pure blood domestic, guaranteed,
Soft-mannered, musical in purr,
The ribbon had declared the breed,
Gentility was in the fur

Such feline culture in the gads
No anger ever arched her back--
What distance since those velvet pads
Departed from the leopard's track!

And when I mused how Time had thinned
The jungle strains within the cells,
How human hands had disciplined
Those prowling optic parallels;

I saw the generations pass
Along the reflex of a spring,
A bird had rustled in the grass,
The tab had caught it on the wing:

Behind the leap so furtive-wild
Was such ignition in the gleam,
I thought an Abyssinian child
Had cried out in the whitethroat's scream.