BartholowMew Simpsunny – The Stray Who Came In From The Heat

Quatrain Poem by Ken Gosse

If you enjoy this feature and would like to see more, let me know with a comment, 💌 share, ♥️ like, or better yet, a 🔄 restack!

You can purchase Written Tales Magazine in print or digital, or become a paid subscriber and download your favorite editions. To view our upcoming stories & poems, please visit our publishing schedule calendar.

---

The cat looked like a desert rat
who once had been a pet
(a passer-by had found the cat—
his mother was our vet).

Mewie wasn’t feral
but appeared he’d been in brawls;
maybe in a barrel
carried down Niagara Falls.

(Our pup considered cats ersatz
and sniffed him warily.
Claws to nose had proven cats
were not Her family.)

He found his way throughout our land—
our pup watched with a frown.
His preference for litter sand
was “One” upstairs, “Two” down.

Done showering, I grabbed a towel
but crunched him with the door.
Surprised, indeed, by deed most foul,
he scurried ’cross the floor.

Soon he learned to sit on me
once he had finished eating.
Not sure why that I’m the guy
chosen for this seating.

I’m fortunate he doesn’t need
to knead me while he’s there,
since otherwise I’d surely bleed
from tats carved without care.

---

Ken Gosse prefers writing metric, rhyming, light verse. First published in First Literary Review-East in 2016 and since then by Pure Slush, Spillwords, Written Tales Magazine, and others including print anthologies. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ.