Where has Clancy Gone?
All right, where did you hide him?
What have you done with that obnoxious, ridiculous creature you foisted on me,
under the human delusion that every species deserves a partner in life.
Where has that maddening, dimwitted rogue gone:
Into the shadowy murk back of the closet,
Burrowing into ratty towels and pee-stained blankets,
fleeing exasperated humans enraged by his ludicrous disruption of household order?
Perhaps he’s hiding under the bedspread,
a sluggish lump,
foolishly thinking I fail to perceive his phlegmatic, lecherous bulge inching closer and closer,
invading my hallowed space?
Or is he massed beneath the crumpled rug,
an inanimate protuberance,
waiting with pathetic patience for glib guests to remark:
“Where is Clancy? …..
“Why, there he is!”,
then reveling in his cheap thrill of acknowledgement and facile affection?
I once exulted in being your one and only cat, all attention mine alone, that’s all I asked
But you inflicted on me this infuriating tomcat monstrosity,
an incorrigible alpha male,
a gauche feline Romeo,
goofily barging into my private cosmos,
sneaking up behind to mount me,
much to my screeching celibate chagrin.
Always the ditsy, sappy drama king,
desperate for my approval
futilely opening and closing cabinet doors,
staging silly death-defying leaps from armchairs to kitchen counters and back again,
in blissful ignorance of my contempt and obliviousness
(Do I harbor any guilt for tacitly inciting his unrequited love,
and for missing the perverse pleasure I enjoyed in disdaining him?
I’ll never tell.
Don’t misunderstand and anthropomorphize me, dear homo sapiens,
I’ll not easily give up the air of feline mystery that for eons has fascinated countless civilizations.)
Yes, he stands eternal as an infernal nuisance …..
but …..
Did you really need to erase him from my life forever?
For we did share, I admit, a muted communion of primal loyalty,
and I shall never again feel the gratuitous slobbery licks that made my narcissistic life a tad richer.
Now, when I am alone in the house dark and still,
I sometimes remember nights laying fast against one another,
kindred, embryonic hearts, spirits once honed in dream deserts of the Mideast.
— Jibby the Cat
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