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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 !

Saturday, August 29, 2015

ode to an office kitten



From a book of poetry primarily having to do with life at Oxford:  the littlest member of the office staff gets their very own poem.  (Lucky them to HAVE an office kitten, I say.)

To the Office Kitten.
Little Kitten, badly bitten,
With a craze for exploration,
Full of wond'ring, ever blund'ring
Into some queer situation,
Well-nigh past all extrication;

How unstable! now the table,
Now the fire, attracts attention;
How uncertain! now the curtain,
Now the blind, requires ascension—
Now your tail needs circumvention.

Little Kitten, deeply smitten
With that tail's intrinsic merits,
How you race it, face it, chase it,
Always in the best of "sperrits,"
Eye as keen as any ferret's.

Now the fringes, tassels, hinges,
Cause you visible commotion;
Bits of paper make you caper;
Boots you gaze on with devotion—
Now you've upset all that lotion!

Little Kitten, e'en a Lytton
Could not word-paint your vagaries;
Now you're lapping, now you're tapping—
Taps as light as Mother Carey's
Chickens, or the steps of fairies.

Prince of friskers, take your whiskers
From the inkpot's black embraces,
Or, I fear, Sir, I shall hear, Sir,
That you've marked with inky traces
All the ladies' snowiest laces.

Little Kitten, true-born Briton,
Probing ev'ry nook and cranny,
Perspicacious and sagacious
As your own old feline granny—
Really you are quite uncanny!

Fluffy midget, how you fidget!
Ev'ry moment you grow bolder;
Saucy urchin, now you're perchin'
On the summit of my shoulder,
Toying with my pet penholder!
* * *
Little Kitten, I have written
Sev'ral stanzas all about you,
But in future you must suit your
Ways to mine, or I shall "clout" you—
Work's done better, Puss, without you!

-- from Pigott, M. T. (1893). Common-room carols: and other verses and parodies chiefly relating to Oxford. Oxford: Alden. 84-85.

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