Response to Notes & Queries: Should I let my cat outside

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image generated by Craiyon
This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 4th September 2022

The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site.

I am replying here instead because it is too good a writing exercise to give up: How quickly can you go from a prompt, a blank mind, and a blank page to a finished piece? And how good can you make it?

This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.

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Should I let my cat outside?


I am unqualified to answer this question and so have passed on your enquiry to a cat who occasionally visits our garden:

“The ghosts of
the birds I killed
slumber deep in the
sleek curl of my tail
that I shaped to imitate a nest
– the cradle of their
beginnings and ends,
now idly barring their
entrance to the afterlife.

While the afternoon drags it heels
I pour from the sunlit sill
and sink into the dark well
of my feral ancestry,
a liquid distillation of
noon shadow,
the burial coat
of my ninth life
car bruised and
aching from its final moult.

The chisel blur of a tail
trawls the air for possibilities.

A weekend stray
methodical in my lust
treading wires of impulse
on new streets that meander
following the lines of old runes.

An interloper up-sty of
the sewage treatment works
where a bronze-age cemetery once lay.

In a lost glade of ferns
I lose form
become a fanning of leaves,
following a premeditated course
among bedding plants that self-seeded
from a nearby garden centre –
a loose thread unstitching
a project of convergent winds.
At its heart lies a slumbering redness
that lives to dine on hens
– a dog with the mind of a cat.

A redundant wall spout
rusted by decades of wet scent
is where I detect the faint
ghosts of my ancestors.
The soul resides here, if nowhere else.

Terracotta pots lined up
in columns like warriors
that I press-ganged into service
have been rinsed of
their territorial agenda.

The hedgerows twitter with
lively warnings of my approach.
The herds who do not
recognise the lion in me
amble and swish tails.

Smelly out-hit of dog
running wild far off the leash
beyond the bounds of play.
The bush cries.
Oily mutt showing
hairlines of blood.

Hard greens of summer
Then red dress
Stray from the hubbub and disco-din
and knife and fork clatter
of a wedding party.
I shed my sins
under her touch.
I do not show her
my red self.

Sunburst low on the hill-brow
obliterating the horizon of the town.
I pounce and land from above
at a death angle.

Like a wet stone
dulled under the sun
its stillness has
consumed its allure.”

~

I hope this is of help.

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