PRINCELY CHARLES

This month's theme for Guernsey's Poetry Open Mic event is CATS and I was therefore relieved to discover a couple of cat-poems gathering dust in the gloomy archive that I tend to refer to as The Bard's Basement.
As a lifelong dog-person, my relationship with cats has always been one of caution. 
Rufus, my Border terrier, was very attracted to cats but not in a friendly way and during his lifetime the bird-life in our neighbourhood flourished and brought us considerable pleasure.
One of the poems I've dusted off to read at the Open Mic (on Monday 21st August) deals with my futile efforts to deter cats from the garden and I recall submitting it, along with a couple of others, to a UK poetry magazine a few years ago. Whilst they accepted and published the other poems, they rejected the cat one and even attached a note to the rejection slip expressing stern disapproval of the poem's content. 
It appears that the editorial committee were all cat owners. 

I have recently become acquainted with a splendid cat called Charles who, were he to be appointed Ambassador for Cats, would win over even the most dyed-in-the-wool cataphobic. 
He is elegance and charm personified although, as with all felines, very much aware of his higher status and therefore at times is disdainful of humans.
Here is his photograph, along with a poem in his honour which he has permitted me to write.

THAT CAT CHARLIE

Like fresh-poured coffee, darkly swirling,
a question mark unfurling, curling
into a sleepy circle then
awake, alert, active again,
he sits immobile in my chair,
immaculate with glossy hair,
ignores the dogs, disdains to frisk,
has an expression, basilisk.

Cautious, I watch him, dare not try
to meet his concentrating eye
(I who am merely flesh and bone)
for fear that I might turn to stone.

He is indeed melodramatic
and never less than enigmatic,
a being of a higher kind
with strangely elevated mind,
whose role in life appears to be
to constantly impress on me
that humans have their place, and that
is somewhat lower than a cat.


This month's Guernsey Open Mic takes place at 8pm on Monday 21st August at La Villette Hotel, St Martin's.