I know. I know.
they are limited, have different
needs and
concerns.

but I watch and learn from them.
I like the little they know,
which is so
much.

they complain but never
worry.
they walk with a surprising dignity.
they sleep with a direct simplicity that
humans just can’t
understand.

their eyes are more
beautiful than our eyes.
and they can sleep 20 hours
a day
without
hesitation or
remorse.

when I am feeling
low
all I have to do is
watch my cats
and my courage
returns.

I study these
creatures.

they are my
teachers.

he was just a
cat
cross-eyed,
a dirty white
with pale blue eyes

I won’t bore you with his
history
just to say
he had much bad luck
and was a good old
guy
and he died
like people die
like elephants die
like rats die
like flowers die
like water evaporates and
the wind stops blowing

the lungs gave out
last Monday.
now he’s in the rose
garden
and I’ve heard a
stirring march
playing for him
inside of me
which I know
not many
but some of you
would like to

know
about

that’s
all.

old Butch, they fixed him
the girls don’t look like much
anymore.

when Big Sam moved out
of the back
I inherited big Butch,
70 as cats go,
old,
fixed,
but still as big and
mean a cat as anybody
ever remembered
seeing.

he’s damn near gnawed
off my hand
the hand that feeds him
a couple of
times
but I’ve forgiven him,
he’s fixed
and there’s something in
him that doesn’t like
it.

at night
I hear him mauling and
running other cats through
the brush.

Butch, he’s still a magnificent
old cat,
fighting
even without it.

what a bastard he must have been
with it
when he was 19 or 20
walking slowly down
his path
and I look at him
now still feel the courage
and the strength
in spite of man’s smallness
in spite of man’s scientific
skill
old Butch
retains
endures

peering at me with those
evil yellow eyes
out of that huge
undefeated head.

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said, “not much
chance…give him these pills…his backbone
is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he’ll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he’s been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there…also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off…”

I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn’t eat, he
wouldn’t touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn’t go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn’t work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat – I’d had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough…

one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.

“you can make it,” I said to him.

he kept trying, getting up and falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.

you know the rest: now he’s better than ever, cross-eyed,
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left…

and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say, “look, look
at *this* !”

but they don’t understand, they say something like, “you
say you’ve been influenced by Celine?”

“no,” I hold the cat up, “by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by *this* !”

I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he’s relaxed he knows…

it’s then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when i see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.

he too knows it’s bullshit but that somehow it all helps.

Maggy