More Poetry for Cats

[Dr. J.]

I should have sent these sooner:

Abyssinias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley’s cat

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: A huge four-footed limestone form
Sits in the desert, sinking in the sand.
Its whiskered face, though marred by wind and storm,
Still flaunts the dainty ears, the collar band
And feline traits the sculptor well portrayed:
The bearing of a born aristocrat,
The stubborn will no mortal can dissuade,
And on its base, in long-dead alphabets,
These words are set: “Reward for missing cat!
His name is Abyssinias, pet of pets;
I, Ozymandias, will a fortune pay
For his return. He heard me speak of vets –
O foolish King! And so he ran away.”

On First Looking into Clarke’s Larder
By John Keats’s cat

Much have I traveled with the poet Keats,
And many shabby homes and mansions seen;
‘Neath many meager tables have I been,
But never did I spy such scanty eats,
As when he went to hear Homeric feats
Read by a friend of his named Clarke, a dean.
My supper was a single small sardine,
And so I went to loot the larder’s treats.
I ope’d the pantry doors with noiseless paws,
And lines of hare and squab and pheasant scanned;
Then felt I like a lion whose swift claws
Bring down some beast, and soon, too gorged to stand,
He sits and tears the carcass with his jaws,
Silent, upon a plain in Swaziland.