The following was prompted by a visit to the local library with a friend. This was just a couple days ago. (Sorry for my silence. I’m half way through the fifth novel of WistThistle. That’s been keeping me busy.) The library is hosting their 9th Annual Poem Town for National Poetry Month. My friend mentioned to the librarian, Gail, that I was a poet. And so she asked if I planned to submit a poem. ‘Sure,’ says me, ‘give me a subject.’ And so she described how her cat was nearly killed when an ice dam fell on it—just recently. Seeing that as a teachable moment in a sensibly Victorian way, I wrote the following:
The Moral of Gail’s Cat
Being an apothegm for the spiritual advancement of the reader.
besides a kidney at the door
a bird, or mouse or two,
the cat had eaten nothing more
than any cat is due;
but come a February thaw,
when ice dams slip from eaves,
the cat exchanged a hind leg’s paw—
the penalty for thieves.
yet being what it was, a cat
that could have fared far worse,
the cat was satisfied with that
(as having dodged a hearse).
considering what a cat can lose
without a further thought
there’s no excuse for us but choose
to work with what we’ve got.
by me, Patrick Gillespie February 26th 2026
