Cat Discussions - iguanas and cat poetry

Cat Discussions - iguanas and cat poetry



While they dreamed that they were awake

and waking walked through a ghostly cat landscape,

they sometimes found time

to include me

in their cat discussions.

I never knew they had so much to say

about chasing iguanas.

Most days I would spend with the cat. It didn’t start out that way. At first he slept in hidden places during the day. After a while, however, he began to follow me around.

I sometimes didn’t notice him climbing up into whatever chair or couch I sat in. I would drop my left hand and find him dreaming next to me.

I began to confide in him assuming that he would keep all of my secrets.I have never lied to that cat. Why bother? It’s not like I could fool him.

On the rare occasions my cat would look me in the eye I wondered what he could see of me and why he so rarely did it, If only he would smile more.

The closest he ever came to smiling was when he yawned and stretched pushing his paws into my leg while he looked up to me.

Whenever I sat on the couch to play guitar, without fail he would jump up and lie next to me before I could even start. His favorite song seemed to be whatever I played.

I often wondered what a cat could see and hear. Caught staring at a blank wall or frozen midstride on the carpet, what were his senses telling him that mine could not?

My cat was on a first name basis with all of my friends and neighbors. Not everyone addressed him by his public name since he had a variety of nicknames and would answer to just about anything.

Only I knew his cat name, the name other cats called him and I used that only in private.

We conversed using cat poetry. He had an uncanny sense of rhythm and rhyme and often led when leaping. There was no connection that cat had not made while flitting forth into any panoply of poetry.

Like the ultimate guitar solo he dragged me along with him to places I would never have known without him.

We explored rooms that existed briefly while we looked through the windows at new season scenes.

He was getting old, real old. One day he called my name, "Jim..."

I turned at the familiar sound of his voice, and, he was crying.

I hope you never have to see a cat cry. It is a hard thing.

That was the last time I heard that cat talk

A few days later he just never woke up





- Peach

July 14, 2009 - February 9, 2010

All but the last five lines were written with a cat curled up against my leg in the middle of a night I wish now would have gone on forever.