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Cat flap creaking as the cat creeps out, she recognises the sound
The cat is slinking quietly to an assignation on the mound.
She puts the kettle on without thinking, not wanting tea
A task she’d done a thousand times, each time he came home from the sea
She heard the cat scrabbling round the garden cold and bare
The garden he’d dug so lovingly each time that he’d been there.
The plants had all died off by now; she hadn’t had the time
to prune and weed and hack and cut. She saw in life no rhyme
and now the cat is in the garden pissing on the thyme.

The cat sits up to stretch its back, it knows there’s something wrong.
The feelings of the morning have been broadcast loud and strong
The first meal of the day was late, the second even more so
And now they’ve brought the master back, a quickly stiffening torso.
No loving hugs are there today, no friendly tousled scratching
Outside the heavens have opened up, rain and dark mood matching
And now the cat is in the garden curled up on the hatching.

The final time that he’d come home was supposed to be his last.
He’d been at sea for thirty years and all before the mast.
The first night back he’d come home late a bit the worse for wear
And in the dark had tripped across the cat and tumbled down the stair
And now the cat is in the garden playing with a pear.

At last the funeral cortege leads the neighbours from the house
In the first black limousine, the widowed grieving spouse
And now the cat is in the garden tormenting a mouse.

David G. Fawcett. 26th August 2001