About Me

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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

you need your cat

I must have been living under a rock all these years. It completely escaped me that Ted Hughes (Poet Laureate of England; 1930-1998) wrote a number of cat poems. They are difficult to find online, but the bits I've found are sensible, sympathetic, likeable. I really didn't expect that, not from someone with such an amount of tragedy in his life (and Sylvia Plath - how tiresome to have that constantly color one's work). For example, right now nothing could be truer than the first few words of "The Cat":
You need your Cat.
When you slump down
All tired and flat
With too much town . . .
But I can't find precisely in which of his books this poem first appeared, though it's in the 2005 Ted Hughes: Collected Poems for Children. Perhaps 2002's The Cat and the Cuckoo?
Too many people
Telling you what
You just must do
And what you must not. . .
And I must tell you to visit here for the entire poem. Meanwhile, I need a cat.

4 comments:

Katnip Lounge said...

I couldn't agree more about Cats, and also about Sylvia Plath.
heh heh.

Anita said...

We cats have inspired many humans in the history of the world.

Feline World Domination Power!!!

PS: Happy New Year ;)

curator said...

Happy New Year Anita! It's so nice to see you here.
...Katnip Lounge, what a pleasure to see someone likeminded!

A few Good Cats said...

Yes, it's a good thing to have a cat. We three (and spirit cat Kelly) make sure our human staff never forgets this fact.

Meanwhile, what's a museum without a cat? You don't want mice, do you?