epitaph for a nut

Here's the engraver Isaac Taylor (father of Jane Taylor, who wrote the verses of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star") with a flip poem on the passing of an elderly cat belonging to a neighboring family:

EPITAPH ON A CAT.
JULY, 1813.
HERE lies old Nut,
In pit-hole put:
Death in his claws has got her:
Her claws had tricks
Of pouncing chicks,
And so the farmer shot her.

Now do not sneer
At Pussy here,
Nor scoffingly crow o'er her;
Perhaps had you
Deservings due,
You had been shot before her.

Of years fifteen,
Great age, I ween—
Age e‘en in cats we honour :
But now to grow
So wicked, oh!
This blasts her fame, fie on her!

Ah, had she died
By our fireside,
When wintry rheums reduced her,
Her mistress’s tears
Had crowned her years,
Nor knave nor fool abused her.

But cats are frail,
Yea, many a tale
Of foolishness they give us:
Now should we say
'Twere not so,—pray
Would anyone believe us?

So, Puss, farewell.
Thy tale I tell
In verse, the long and short on 't:
But who, and how,
Tell mine, I trow
Is matter more important.

Taylor, A. (1905). The "Original poems" and others. London: Wells-Gardner, Darton & Co. x - xiii.

(PD Google-digitized)