Cabal of cat and mouse
He has a way, the cat, who sits
on the short grass in lamplight.
Him you could appreciate and more -
how the musky night fits him,
like a glove; how he adapts down there,
below boughs, to his velvet arena.His, for playing in. A shadow
plodding past his white paws
could be a swad of anything;
except that, as it bolts, he retrieves
and has tenderly couched it,
and must unroll alongside, loving
His paws dab and pat at it, his
austere head swivels at an angle
to the barrel neck. Prone, he eyes
its minutest move; his haunch relaxing
parades tolerance, for the pose entreats
double to play - it is energy.involved if you like, in a tacit exchange
of selves, as the cat flares up again,
and has siezed what he siezes.
And acts proud, does a dance, for it is
his appetite puts all the mouse into a mouse;
the avid mouse, untameable,bound by so being to concur
in his bones, with the procedure.
Even the end cannot cancel that.
The shift from play to kill, measured,
is not advertised. He has applied
a reserved gram of tooth power,to raise this gibbering curt squeal
at last, and now glassily gazes down.
Plunged, barked as if punched,
and has axed his agitator. You heard
soon the headbones crunch; and you shrank,
the spine exploding like a tower in air.Christopher Middleton
(Illustration "The king around here" by Ida Elisabeth Jorgensen)
