Old Cat Lady ~ doggerel

Old Cat Lady ~ doggerel

It started with a cat we found in a gully

that followed us home, and I named her Tammy

I was five. And Tammy was in for a ride

(so was I) it’s lucky that cats have nine lives.

We put out a saucer of milk on the porch

and a blanket, and she hunkered down

between the folds in the cold it was winter

My parents didn’t want her inside.

That was the year we moved to the island

a remote fishing town and Tammy came with us

bedded down in a wash shed at the back of the house

where she dined primarily on mouse.

Prompt: “write a poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.”