Oh hi, cat.
I didn’t see you there
At first
With the severed head
Of a squirrel
Skulking under my car.
“It’s OK,
Because baby, I’m feral, too,”
I said,
It poured forth
So naturally,
As talking to the tame never does —
Gamy blood from an animal’s throat.
We became
Fast friends
After we trapped you.
You, my moon-faced little love
Were so skinny
And flea-ridden
And hard-angled then.
Look at us now —
Sitting like toasty loaves
Lined up in a windowsill,
Smiling smugly at passersby
Eating cheeses.
No visitors for us, please.
I had lost my job that September
And had that month
To domesticate
The both of us.
And though I still have you
Well-past then,
That time is
Consecrated, sepia-soaked —
Forever cradled in memory
As “My month with Moxie,
Timestamped: Sept., 2022.”
We were going to fix you
And punt you back to the wild.
It wasn’t love at first sight
I admit,
But now I live to
Kiss the baby-powder-and-syrup-smelling
Space betwixt those ear-points —
Untipped because you
Are just too precious
To identify as uninitiated
Before everything else you are —
Seven and a half pounds
Of orange-creme arrogance,
Full of courage,
Feisty, murderous
And loving.
My Moxie-woxie,
So ravenous,
Our little apex predator,
Sashaying around the
Indoor/outdoor reaches
Of the earth
With those all-hearing
Radar ears
And so-much-seeing saucer eyes.
You know you’re
Made for warm laundry
And air conditioner hums
And barren
Hunting ground
Alike,
Just like me,
And like everyone
Who holds such
Kinship with a cat.
We’re industrious
As hunters, baby.
We make sense
Of this wilderness, mutual,
We conquer, inflicting
Puncture wounds
To earth and tree
And vein and paper
With the sharpest implements
We can find.
The ink spills from our kill
And we call it making a living.
——–