“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.” Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, Gigi and the Cat

had we homÍnidos our wits, we’d have had his cojones clipped
before some perro made him into a crippled capon, that tomcat
he was boisterous and adamant and ready for trouble, it wasn’t
just his maleness he lost, it was his life, poor thing and he left

the other mourning and coughing up chicken bits and hair balls
too woebegone to steal fatty succulents from Mexicali Rose
while she was busy adjusting the bbq grill, flirting with Brian ~
those two spiced their tacos with a bit of kissy-face touchy-bod

in the heat of the heat of that summer in ’86, when we celebrated
Cinco de Mayo in the park off Alameda de las Pulgas and a new
little furry calabaza came into our lives, half-starved and dehydrated
with a heavy chain-choker some gamberro put around his neck –

idiot! – and Brian freed him and we rushed him to the vet hospital
where they repaired the damage, he became el hermano pequeño
to the black and white, the essential practical cat, forgetting her
tom and her mourning, letting that sweet boy stroll into her heart

© 2018, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Photo credit Darren Hanlon, Public Domain Photographs.com

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

I know you are all critter lovers, so this week’s prompt honors that. Tell us about one of your furry, feathered or other animal companions in poem/s and …

Share your poem/s on theme in the comments section below or leave a link to it/them. All poems on theme will be published on the first Tuesday following this post.

 No poems submitted through email or Facebook will be published. 

IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.

PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.  

Deadline:  Monday, March 11 by 8 pm Pacific Standard Time.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning non-judgemental place to connect.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

ABOUT

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

46 Comments

  3. Very happy that the prompt is about cats. Here is my submission:
    THE JUDGE copyright Irene Emanuel

    My file was open on my desk,
    I left it there a while;
    I did not know a judge was close
    and watching with a smile.

    I started work on something new,
    my file was out of sight;
    the noise I heard alerted me,
    I turned and got a fright.

    The judge was sitting near my file,
    his back was hunched and tense;
    he threw-up on my poetry,
    with careful negligence.

    My poems must have turned his lunch,
    he really was in pain;
    that blasted cat disliked my work
    and vomited again.

    It seems my poetry is deficient,
    I’ll watch TV instead;
    but if that cat sits on my lap,
    I’ll smack his furry head.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. Hi Jamie,

    my seventh response:

    If Only My Dead Dears

    deliberately hid away

    like our new kitten who disappears
    so we cannot hear her bell,
    her purrs.

    We open cupboards, look under,
    into, around
    and sigh they’ve gone for good
    this time

    then smile.

    And it is as if she says
    he, he, couldn’t find me.

    No matter how hard we look
    we only find the dead in our heads.

    And sometimes smile
    as we remember them in a place
    we had not thought to find them
    for some time.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Hi Jamie,

    My sixth response:

    As Abandoned

    black kitten lobbed out of joyrider’s car window
    top of our street, always had bare patch
    on her upper thigh, could not get enough
    strokes, hugs, Daddy’s girl.

    in her moving owner’s back garden for months,
    new owner could not keep her
    due to his chickens and dog, always her small
    paws catch your clothes as you pass.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. Hi, Jamie,

    Here’s my fifth response:

    Barrage

    You hear a blackbird trill,
    stroked by a gentle wisp.
    You inhale seeds and grass
    and suddenly know why

    your Grandad spent time
    out of the house in the garden
    away from the barrage,
    snipes and aggro of his wife.

    And as you weed the bricked path
    to the front door your black cat complains
    to be let in and you quietly advise
    that he has a perfectly serviceable
    cat flap at the back, until

    your wife opens the front door
    and let’s him in and scowls at you
    as she shuts it.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. Hi Jamie,

    Here’s my fourth response:

    I Found Kittens In Our Settee

    I had to trash
    vintage settee

    we’d just got
    of off that thief Mavis.

    We’d lost our fat cat.
    Couldn’t find her for love nor…

    Settee were making noises.
    Used kitchen knife.

    Found cat and new kittens
    sat on £350.

    Mavis hadn’t stolen it
    after all. I’ll buy her some cheap wine.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Hi Jamie,

    Here is my third response:

    My rough

    tongue licks my sharp claws
    as i see warm flesh canter up hill.

    Haunches heavy with meat,
    back heavy with rider.

    I leap at the horses backside
    claws gain purchase.

    Rider crashes, hot meal gallops away.
    I snarl at the dismounted man.

    Human can be good meat.
    He challenges me with metal.

    My claws taste his blood,
    again and again. He rushes

    toward a spired house of stone.
    Tries the locked door.

    I am in the porch with him.
    He a trapped animal like me.

    We press on each other.
    Neither tamed, die together.

    (Based on the local legend of “The Cat And Man”

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  18. “Tears and Toys”
    (Raanana, January 31, 2013)

    A poem is sometimes like a joke
    Except instead of being funny
    It’s so sad your heart leaps out of your chest
    And you look around to see whether anyone else saw that
    But they never do.
    I once read a poem about my dead dog Chewy
    How I buried her with my tears and her toys
    Only I didn’t say her name or that she was a dog.
    Some people came up to me afterward, a man and a woman,
    And she told me how they appreciated my poem
    Because they had buried their daughter too
    With their tears and her toys.
    Then I told them the punch-line
    That my poem was about my dog Chewy
    (I loved her so)
    Because honesty’s the best policy.
    The woman winced once, I think,
    And then a curtain came down
    Hiding their faces from me.
    Now and then I hear laughter
    And I look around
    But don’t see any joke being told.
    He seems to slap his knees at our sorrows.
    Sometimes I get all mixed up about
    Who’s God
    And who’s the poet
    And who’s burying their dead love
    With their tears and her toys.

    (c) Mike Stone
    from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/yet-another-book-of-poetry/

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  19. “Worry”
    (Raanana, June 21, 2013)

    What if they don’t come home?
    I’ve been standing on the couch
    I don’t know how long
    Looking out the window …
    What if they don’t come home?
    Their cars aren’t there,
    The black one or the brown one,
    What if they don’t …?
    It’s quiet and I’m so lonely –
    What if …?
    Nobody will give me water
    And nobody will give me food
    And nobody will love me
    And nobody will come.
    Don’t they know what could happen
    When they say goodbye to me?
    What if they don’t come home?
    I’ll lie down to sleep
    I don’t know how long.
    At least I won’t think about
    What if they don’t come home,
    But I can’t sleep because
    What if they don’t come home?
    Don’t they know what I think?
    Don’t they care?
    If they only knew
    How impossible it is to think like this
    They’d never leave me.
    What if they don’t come home?
    Please come back … now.
    What if they don’t come home?

    (c) Mike Stone
    from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/yet-another-book-of-poetry/

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  20. “The Service Revolver”
    (Raanana, May 22, 2009)

    Sixty-six pounds of snarling anger
    In the only path to safety
    For six pounds of cold fear.
    A chain squeezes suddenly around the honey-colored throat
    And the anger moves on,
    At first reluctantly, and then
    Loping along at a goodly pace
    Wet nostrils flared and quivering,
    Ready to sift and scoop up
    Anything of taste or interest
    Along the dark and lamp-lit way.
    Walking my dog Daisy
    Whose name belies her vigor and strength
    Barely controlled by a pact initialed
    But never formally ratified,
    She leads me through the valley of my loneliness
    Which I measure in the scrape and echo
    Of footsteps having no place to go.
    Walking under an archway of sparse leaved bracken
    And thick limbs of eucalyptus
    Thoughts swarm around us
    In no particular rhyme or meter,
    Like the personal black hole
    Pulling me towards an eventual horizon
    In gossamer strands of infinity,
    And another: at what point in our lives
    Does it become reasonable
    To contemplate suicide,
    To feel the coolness and weight of one’s service revolver
    Against the weight of continuing to be?

    (c) Mike Stone
    from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/the-uncollected-works-of-mike-stone/

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  21. “Chewy”
    (Raanana, February 4, 2007)

    I have a riddle for you:
    ‘When is a house empty, even though it’s full of people?’
    She had more names than God Himself.
    We should have called her Uhuru—
    Freedom was the one thing she loved more than us
    And finally she’s escaped the soft clutches of our love.
    In our eagerness and innocence
    We brought her home too soon
    To be weaned from her mother,
    A frightened little thing
    No bigger than my fist.
    She grew to love us though,
    As fiercely as we loved her.
    Some people were scared of her
    But we’d give anything
    For her to warm herself against us.
    Last night her little heart burst its bounds
    And she escaped her life
    Running free at last through open fields
    Photographed by death.
    This morning when we buried her,
    It rained cats and dogs.

    (c) Mike Stone
    from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/the-uncollected-works-of-mike-stone/

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  23. Hi Jamie,

    My second response:

    Coincidence

    Every morning our tabby
    sits beside the grave
    beside the wall
    of her black predecessor
    Our lass and I joke
    she is speaking
    to her ‘grandma’

    My Nana hates cats
    who leave “messages”
    in her garden
    Don’t know how
    people can live
    with cat hair…

    disgusting how people
    let them walk
    on surfaces.
    She never visits us.

    Cat and Nana never meet.
    Their senses fail
    at the same time.
    Eyes, ears, mouth.

    Something tells me
    not long after our cat
    goes Nana will too.

    Arrivee from work
    our cat rigor mortis stiff
    across her armchair.

    Three days later
    I get a phone call
    Nana has fallen.
    I sit beside her
    hospital bedside.

    Arrive home to find
    a new tabby cat
    who asks me
    to stroke her
    in the way our
    black cat did.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  24. Hi Jamie,

    Here’s my first response:

    The Gift

    A small dark shape on kitchen tile
    stared over by our cat,

    Move closer. it is a sparrow bairn,
    whose chest balloons out as my sigh releases.

    Scooped up, as I take it out to the garden.
    It stands on the plastic lip.

    Over the fence our neighbour stands in hunched
    dark tears “My mam won’t be coming out of hospital”

    My breath caught.
    The sparrow flies away.

    (From my second forthcoming pamphlet to be published in England probably later this year)

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  25. .little dog gone.
    oh you were so very small

    hash tag

    not a proper dog

    was said.

    oh you were good company

    hash tag

    not like a human

    was said.

    oh boy on a good day how you

    would run.

    hash tag.

    more like scampering

    was said and overheard.

    little dog gone.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

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