TESSA CASTRO

N COMPETITION No 267, you were invited to write a poem as a cat’s view of a famous (named) person. It proved a successful device. Jennifer Willis gave Mitsou’s view of Marilyn Monroe: ‘My mistress has big eyes of blue/But not so blue as mine./My mistress wears a coat of fur/But mine is much more fine.’ Gail White’s cat lived uncomfortably and made the poet the fatality. T S Eliot got off lightly, though Jim Birkett began, ‘In the room the humans come and go/ talking of Michelangelo.’ Fiona Clark chose John Dee’s cat. D A Prince wrote of David Hockney, painter of , and Gary Smith ventriloquised Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy. Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of that reliable cat-alogue of words, , going to Martin Elster’s report from Schrödinger’s cat.