8 Great Poems About Cats

Haiku? More like hai-cute.

1. "February" by Margaret Atwood

Life Magazine / Via culturalcat.com

"Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am

He’ll think of something."

(Read the whole poem here)

2. "The Cat of the House" by Ford Madox Ford

Via imgur.com

"Over the hearth with my 'minishing eyes I muse; until after

the last coal dies.

Every tunnel of the mouse,

every channel of the cricket,

I have smelt,

I have felt

the secret shifting of the mouldered rafter,

and heard

every bird in the thicket.

I see

you

Nightingale up in the tree!

I, born of a race of strange things,

of deserts, great temples, great kings,

in the hot sands where the nightingale never sings!"

3. "Macavity, The Mystery Cat" by T.S. Eliot

Wikipedia

"Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw -

For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.

He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:

For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!"

(Whole poem here)

4. "Lullaby for the Cat" by Elizabeth Bishop

Via culturalcat.com

"Minnow, go to sleep and dream,

Close your great big eyes;

Round your bed Events prepare

The pleasantest surprise.

Darling Minnow, drop that frown,

Just cooperate,

Not a kitten shall be drowned

In the Marxist State.

Joy and Love will both be yours,

Minnow, don't be glum.

Happy days are coming soon —

Sleep, and let them come…"

5. "To Mrs. Reynold's Cat" by John Keats

imgur.com / Via poems.com

"Cat! who hast passed thy grand climacteric,

How many mice and rats hast in thy days

Destroyed? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze

With those bright languid segments green, and prick

Those velvet ears - but prithee do not stick

Thy latent talons in me, and up-raise

Thy gentle mew, and tell me all thy frays

Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.

Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -

For all thy wheezy asthma, and for all

Thy tail's tip is nicked off, and though the fists

Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,

Still is that fur as soft as when the lists

In youth thou enteredst on glass-bottled wall."

6. "Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats" by Sylvia Plath

Via telegraph.co.uk

"Once we children sneaked over to spy Miss Mason

Napping in her kitchen paved with saucers.

On antimacassars

Table-top, cupboard shelf, cats lounged brazen,

One gruff-timbred purr rolling from furred throats:

Such stentorian cats!

With poke and giggle, ready to skedaddle,

We peered agog through the cobwebbed door

Straight into yellow glare

Of guardian cats crouched round their idol,

While Ella drowsed whiskered with sleek face, sly wits:

Sphinx-queen of cats."

(Whole poem here)

7. "The Kitten and Falling Leaves" by William Wordsworth

bushicat.blogspot.com

"But the Kitten, how she starts,

crouches, stretches, paws, and darts!

First at one, and then its fellow,

just as light and just as yellow.

There are many now - now one,

now they stop and there are none:

What intenseness of desire,

in her upward eye of fire!

With a tiger-leap half-way,

now she meets the coming prey.

lets it go as fast, and then;

Has it in her power again."

(Whole poem here)

8. "The Cat and the Moon" by WIlliam Butler Yeats

Via windling.typepad.com

"The cat went here and there

And the moon spun round like a top,

And the nearest kin of the moon,

The creeping cat, looked up.

Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,

For, wander and wail as he would,

The pure cold light in the sky

Troubled his animal blood.

Minnaloushe runs in the grass

Lifting his delicate feet.

Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?"

(Whole poem here)