Sonnet to a Cat:
Cat, who has passed thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroyed? How many tidbits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears, but prythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me, 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 nicked off, and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is thy fur as when the lists
In youth thou enteredst on glass-bottled wall.
Clinton Scollard writes tenderly of his lost