In your sweet little Alice blue gown.
I sing to Alice,
my voice a little rough
but smoothing out with repetition.
I sing to Alice
and she looks up.
Her eyes are brilliant green
against the tabby darkness of her gown,
her face precise and eager.
I sing to Alice
and she sits on her haunches.
Her front paws dangle
and I rub her head.
I sing to Alice
and she follows,
narrowly escaping my foot.
I stop my singing.
Her sociability fades away
with food and with my company.
Author notes
Alice and I have a history. We first met when her owner saw my ad in Lennie's Health Food store and asked me to cat sit. I did that for about a year before he told me he would not be needing me much longer. His new partner was allergic and he had decided to give Alice up. I said I'd look for someone to take her but, when I couldn't find a new owner, I agreed to take her in. It has worked out okay with Pandora, Cat #1, as some of you will have read in my poems about their relationship.
Let me know what you think of this.
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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Being a cat person, I much enjoyed this. Your great imagery and emotion in this made it easy to relate to - and fun to read!
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Wonderful
A very creative and well expressed write as always. So very well done. Best of luck in the contest
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cats are like that
those cats, attentive one minute, eating the next. you captured the cattiness extremely well in this poem. enjoyed the read.
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Love it. And I am a sucker for cats. Don't own one now: we had a choice between cats and curtains, and the curtains won! You've a lot of colour in these lines - I love the way the green of the eyes leaps out against "the tabby darkness of her gown." Sounds a bit like my daughter's cat - small cat, but enormous eyes - one could drown in them. I've a feeling you might know this piece by W.B.Yeats, but just maybe you haven't seen it. Keep up with the cat poems: they're a braw tonic.
The Cat and the Moon
The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
-- William Butler Yeats
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Thank you for the Yeats. Alice is not that small, a bit chunky, but still so pretty. I try to keep her on a diet and I suppose Pandora benefits too (she is 13) though she has never been overweight at all. One of those thin, slinky black cats.
Thanks for your comments.
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as a cat man not by choice just have aquired them all 9 at last count and some little meows under the house that havent emerged yet i can fully relate to this theres 4 that really have me under their paws , they are little kids who know exactly how to get what they want , loved the way you penned this fantastic
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Judith
You have made quite a niche for yourself as the Cat-poet! Such a funny little tale (pun). It is years since I heard 'Alice Blue Gown' , it must be v old song.
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Alice blue was named after Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, early 20th C.
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