Pluto’s Paw
Black is the cat who stalks my garden,
Golden are his eyes.
While turnips shine in windows,
And the dead are in disguise.
As if he knows his time is now,
To pounce and colonise.
I know what he is after –
It is shelter and a lap.
My neighbours, when they spy him,
Try to shoo and hiss and clap.
But purr-by-purr, so slowly,
I am falling for his trap.
I like to call him Pluto,
As he slinks across the night –
As if master of the underworld,
And looking for a fright –
As black as human folly
When the Devil takes delight.
I know a gloomy author
With a gothic sense of gore,
Who would turn a black-clad cat
Into a tortured metaphor,
And would torment alcoholic pessimists
For evermore.
Now, I’m not such a superstitious sort –
Unlike my wife –
She shivers in a hushed tone,
Or she cries a merry strife.
But I just see a lonely cat
Who wants a quiet life.
The thing is, my good lady
Is much smarter than you’d think.
So she knows this talk of spirits
Is the stuff of too much drink.
But her Sunday mornings linger
And can slip-through any chink.
It’s not like she objects to cats –
We’ve housed a dozen yet.
Though not these days – they’re sadly gone,
And left us in their debt.
It’s time, I say, to open-up,
And love the one we get.
I need to ask her blessing, though,
If I’m to bring him in.
To stand-up to the neighbours
When the prattle-mouths begin.
For he may be a demon straight from Hell –
But that’s no sin.
After an exhausting month of Inktobers, here is a bonus horror poem…except it’s not at all scary…sorry about that…
