Sonnet to Mrs Reynolds Cat by John Keats
Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy'd? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears -- but pr'ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me -- and upraise
Thy gentle mew -- and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists--
For all thy wheezy asthma -- and for all
Thy tail's tip is nick'd off -- and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft, as when the lists
In youth thou enter'dest on glass bottled wall.
And just look at young Magnus, turfed out of his red basket by The Dowager (now in her nineteenth year which makes her almost ninety-three in human years) and little gentle-cat that he is, he didn't fight her for it
Names in comments (and these can go worldwide) for the chance to win one of two copies of John Keats by Nicholas Roe, published by Yale University Press, and Magnus, still a youthful cat with many 'frays of fish and mice' etc to come we hope, will rouse himself long enough to draw the winners tomorrow evening.
Recent Comments