We have a cat of common gray—
In fact a plain and everyday
Old Tab—to be exact I’d say
She’s common in most every way.
She’s common in her manners quite,
She’s never known the word “polite,”
When dining with her neighbors, _might_
To her cat mind is always _right_.
She’s common in her diet too—
Cheese, liver, milk, or cold beef-stew—
And when at last she finds she’s through,
She licks her chops as most cats do.
She’s common for the reason that
No chipmunk, gopher, mouse or rat
Is sure she won’t cave in his slat
To decorate our kitchen-mat.
She’s common in the way she’ll toy
With life—decoy and then annoy
And torture with cool, fiendish joy
The thing she would at last destroy.
She’s common in the motherly
Devotion with which she can see
Her kits lick up the blood—to be
Eventually as cruel as she.
She’s common in the attitude
Which she’s persistently pursued
Toward rearing up a meowing brood—
Twice every year the stunt’s renewed.
She’s common in the view she’d share
With all those poor folks who declare
That the community should care
For all the young they choose to bear.
Indeed so common is she here,
That should we count each little dear
That’s littered every fiscal year,
(Her seventh winter’s drawing near),
Allowing six to every score,
(At times it’s less but mostly more),
The tally would not figure lower
Than somewhere say—near eighty-four.
But as four out of every six
Are ferried ’cross the River Styx
And swiftly rendered good for nix
Before they register their kicks,
And whereas those that still remain
In order to relieve the strain
And thus assuage a mother’s pain
Until her grief is on the wane,
Are likewise held beneath the spout,
Or soon or later parcelled out
To someone who beyond a doubt
Enjoys the feel of cats about,
It will be fitting to observe
That we have done our best to serve
This purring matron through each curve
Of her plain, boundless, common nerve.
We’ve done our best—as one may see,
To quell each base antipathy,
That she—our Tab might still be free
To rear her endless progeny.