I must share with you again something from Henry Beard’s Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse.
I love the prodigious imagination at work in this little book: the exuberant love of both poetry and cats, and the way that Beard is able to evoke the original poem while making it something utterly… well, cat-like.
It’s a cool thing about people. We just love to put things together in new and interesting ways. We like to create resonances between things we love, whether it’s parties with friends or pop culture references in books. We like to look at the clouds and say, I see a bunny. We like to dance with strangers at rock concerts. And some of us like to read hommages written ostensibly by poets’ cats.
Don’t ask me to explain it. It’s a cat-lovin’ poetry-readin’ human Saturday kind of thing, and that’s all there it to it.
Treed
by Joyce Kilmer’s Cat
I think that I shall never see
A poem nifty as a tree.
A tree whose rugged trunk seems meant
To speed a happy cat’s ascent;
A tree that laughs at dogs all day
And serves up baby birds for prey;
A tree whose limbs are in the sky
Where clandestinely I can spy;
Until it does upon me dawn
It is a mile down to the lawn.
Poems are made by cats like me,
But only you can get me off this goddam stupid tree.
— from Poetry For Cats by Henry Beard.
And you know what else I like about people? That we’ll help each other down from the goddam stupid tree every once in a while. It’s one of the great human things.
Fun poem.
“And you know what else I like about people? That weâll help each other down from the goddam stupid tree every once in a while. Itâs one of the great human things.”
I like that about about people too. And some people are better at it than others. You seem to excel at it. Thank you.
I love these cat poems. Thank you for sharing them. I had to walk to the bookstore and get me some more. Cats are awesome. I had so many in Mexico, all of them strays. Then one of them died a horrible death and my eight-year-old neighbor wouldn’t stop crying. She loved Aó even more than I did, and it had taken me two full weeks to stop sobbing about the cat. I thought I should do something to ease the girl’s pain. So I started writing/drawing a story about our mutual friend. I would slip one panel under her door and she had to tell me what happened next by writing it down and also slipping it under my door. We did that for over two months. It was about a cat who didn’t want to get down from its tree but the birds were so afraid of it, they all got together and figured out a way to send Aó traveling around the world. But then I had to move to Canada and Machi (that’s my ex-neighbor’s name) got really depressed when I told her I was leaving. Her mom came to see me and asked me to keep writing to her daughter even if I was far, because it helped her a lot. So we remained pen pals for a few more years. Now she’s all grown up. She’s climbed down from the tree, and so have I. It’s one of the ways people help each other out.
This is not a poem about cats but shadows. Still, I couldn’t help but picture a playful furry thing when I read “Copycat” by Robert Heidbreder:
Copycat, copycat,
Shadow’s a copycat!
Out in the sun
Whenever I run,
It runs.
Whenever I twirl,
It twirls.
I curl up small.
It curls up small.
I stand up tall.
It stands up tall.
Copycat, copycat,
Shadow’s a copycat.
Whenever I hide,
It hides.
I spread out wide.
It spreads out wide.
I pat my head.
It pats its head.
I fall down dead.
It falls down dead.
But when I go inside to stay,
Copycat, copycat goes away!
🙂 I went through my files and found some of the scans of the doodle-letters I exchanged with Machi:
Ão 1
Ão 2
Ão 3
Ão 4
Ão 5
Ão 6
Ão 7
One of these days I’ll scan the letters I got from Machi. I loved working her ideas into my doodle-letters. Some were pretty wacky and fun. And I’ll try to find the others scans of my end of the conversation.
Well, the Spanish is lost on me, but I enjoyed the illustrations. You are a woman of many talents, Karina.
Jennifer, thanks. It’s just quick fountain-pen-and-wet-napkin on bond paper. I was thinking how cool it would be to find out Machi has kept the originals the way I’ve kept her letters. I only scanned my doodles before I slipped them under her door or mailed them cross continent so I could keep track of how the story was developing over the years of our correspondence.
Karina, these are so cool. I adore them. I will have to work on understanding the text, but what a fun way to learn!
And thank you very very much for not sharing the details of Ao’s horrible death. I really, really cannot bear stories of animals suffering. Human suffering I can handle, but not animals.
I actually was horribly rude to my stepfather fairly recently because he was launching into one of those stories. When I asked him not to continue because I was finding it upsetting, he said, oh, okay, well let me just tell you this bit…. He just wasn’t really paying attention to what I was saying, he wasn’t hearing me. I got frantic, N got protective, and we both basically told him to shut up at his own dinner table (using slightly more polite words, but wow, we were rude…) I apologized, of course. But it really is one of my buttons, and I know I would react the same way again.
Kelley, I’ll help with the working-on-understanding the text. I can also fill in the blanks in between panels, since half of the story is in Machi’s letters. Don’t spend time on these right now. I just got an idea… you’ll find out soon enough.
About sharing the details, I wouldn’t/ couldn’t. If I think about them, I’ll end up feeling very upset and ready to cry all over again. Ão was very dear, so I wrote him and Machi a happy story with happy adventures and a happy ending. Just the way cat lives would be if I was Master of the Universe.
I’m glad I didn’t push that button. I guess I also have one on my panel. Cats, parrots… sometimes dogs (though I’m terrified of dogs, so not so much)… they make me tender.
C’est pour cela qu’il faut garder les arbres debout, parce comment espionner sinon? très Bizarre mais c’est vrai qu’un arbre peut se révéler un vrai nid douillet pour diverses animaux, même pour l’homme. A condition qu’il prenne conscience de sa nécessité.
Merci Kelley
Nadia, bonjour! J’éspére que tout va bien avec toi. Je suis d’accord avec toi concernant la nécessité des arbres. Beaucoup des arbres entourent notre maison.. sont si beaux, si tranquils, ils me semblent parfois comme un nid — c’est le mot parfait.