Cat Songs, Smiles and Stories! (Some Sweet Things in Life)

By Susan Anthony-Tolbert

This book is all about cats! It is a collection of poems and stories about felines: their behaviors; their unique personalities; their foibles and their affections for their human caregivers. This collection also reflects the love and care given to felines by their human companions. It is meant to entertain and to offer a respite from the worries and stresses of life. Cat guardians will recognize some of the antics of their own cats. The thirty eight poems in the first part of the book are all based on cats and kittens that I have known and with whom I have shared my life. A large number of my cat-human adventures have been included. They involve a kitty wearing a gold-fish bowl; paper product chases and destructions; wake-up calls; a singing cat with his mule companion; as well as cats' senses of time and timing. I have used different styles of poetry: free verse; haiku; cinquain; terza rima and acrostic. Hopefully, these have allowed me to convey my cats as they would like! In the second part of the book there are eight short stories. The adventures as well as the cats in the first six stories are/were my cat companions. Two of the stories are about cats that I did not have the opportunity to know personally. One is about an abandoned cat and a young girl, whom I did meet, and how she rescued this cat that was left and discarded as unwanted. It touched me when I learned about the story years ago and I felt compelled to write and include it. The last story tells a tale of "Ranger, The Yellow Tavern Cat." I never got to meet or know Ranger but I have certainly heard much about this cat who was a most important resident of Hughlett's Tavern/Rice's Hotel in Heathsville, Virginia. Thanks to the work of the volunteers in the 1990s who saved the Tavern, a historical treasure, from disrepair and neglect, Ranger enjoyed a wonderful life as their beloved Yellow Cat. This is a cat who lived his 'adventures' to the maximum. And it is believed by some that his spirit floats around the bustling Tavern with its café; shops, farmers' markets to this day. A marker in front of the Tavern honors this cherished feline. I want to wish my readers much enjoyment and I send 'purrs.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667894775

Book preview

The poems and stories in this book are the creative work of this author and are protected by copyright. None of them or an part thereof  may be copied or used without expressed written permission. Any clipart used in this book or on the covers was found in the Public Domain. Any errors in this respect are the responsibility of the author with regrets. (Spring, 2023)

ISBN: 978-1-66-789477-5

Dedication

To all the wonderful cats that have shared my life throughout many, many years. I have been so blessed and so fortunate to have known them.

        To my husband, Dorian Tolbert, who has supported and continues to support my writing and all my projects with such good will and love and who always helps with our animal companions.

        To my life-long and long-term friends, who always assist and support me in so many ways: Genny-Lalli Morgan; Victor Gramigna-Robertson; Margery Miller Moores; Charlotte Selenski; Spence Gibbins; Don Horton; Keith Harancher; Bud and Carolyn Disney and Joan Ziejewski.

yellow cat portrait clip artcat 04 clip art

Table of Contents

Part I: Cat Songs

1. Cat Songs

2. Cat Naming:A Rebuttal to T. S. Eliot’s The Naming of Cats.

3. Early Morning Cat Whiskers

4. Cat Request

6. Helping

7. Of the Colors of Cats

8. Cat-Visit

9. Mrs. Cooke’s Cat

10. Of My Mother and My Kitten

11. Whiskers in the Wind

12. Leapin Lizards

13. Winston and My Dad’s Glasses

14. Fish Bowl Kitty

15. Cat Eyes

16. The Move

17. Vincent of the Starry, Starry Night

18. Black Cat Daddy

19. The Yellow Line Kitty

20. Cat Afternoon

21. Cat-Sleep

22. Visitors: The Cat and the Possum

23. The Climb

24. My Very Green-Eyed Girl

25. The Magic Puff

26. Closed Door

27. Hairballs Considered

28. Things Gone Missing

29. Barn Cat: Black and White

30. Veterinarian Visits

31. Selecting My Next Cat

32. The Cat-Slap

33. The Cat Schedule

34. The Paper Products Saga

35. The Tale of Tails

36. Cat Tunnel

37. The Arrival

38. Cat Voices in the After

Part II: Cat Stories!

1. My Heroine Had Four White Paws

2. The White-Hair Cuffs Adventure

3. Dust Bunnies and My Little Brown Cat

4. Vincent and the Cat Show

5. Cat Unwanted: Cat-Napped to Love

6. The Twelve Days of Christmas: When a Barn Cat Flies

7. Cooper and the Christmas Cake

8. Ranger: The Yellow Tavern Cat

9. Epilogue

Purrs

About the Author

Part I: Cat Songs

Introduction

This is my attempt to honor and to celebrate all the wonderful felines I have known or have had in my life for so many years. They have offered wonderful delights, companionship and affection. I am so grateful for their presence, along with the wonderful dogs and horses I have been privileged to know and love. While I could not write about every one of my cats individually, I included all of them in one way or another in my poems and stories. And many of my poems or cat songs, as I like to think of them, are actually story poems that relate an adventure. All of the poems in this book are about events that happened in my life or in the lives of my cats.

My Cats

So blessed!

Have life with cats.

The years of joys and purrs.

Lucky me, to share these sweet times.

Need more.

In later life I have come to poetry by a somewhat circuitous route.  Of course as a child I loved rhyming and the typical poems and limericks that children sing and recite. In high school and college, my friends and I were devoted to the works of Sylvia Plath, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, e.e. Cummings, Emily Dickinson to name a few. But it was not until I started to learn Spanish with my husband during the last few years that I got hooked.  We followed the advice of language tutorials that reading poetry is a great way to improve one’s knowledge of a language.  When we read (more accurately tried to read) some Spanish poetry and when I followed that with some French poetry (my Mom was part French Canadian), I discovered that I loved thinking in meter, in rhyme, in free verse in English too.

        Of course at the beginning of this new found pleasure, I thought a poem is a poem is a poem. This was true even after several courses in poetry for my English major in college.  I guess I had forgotten so much after many years out of school. After taking some tutorials on line, I now know (or have been reminded) that there are so many different types of poems and so many different rhyming patterns and syllable patterns,  as well as no rhyming at all. 

        I have enjoyed remembering my experiences with my cats and my observations of them in various poetic forms and styles, such as blank verse, haiku, cinquain, terza rima, and acrostic. I found trying to express my feelings for them within the confines of defined lines, stanzas, syllables or rhymes was a good mental challenge as well as a demand on creativity.

        The first part of this book contains my collection of cat songs or poems. In the second part, I have written about some experiences that I had with my cats that seemed to fit better in a short story or vignette format. However, the fifth story, Cat Unwanted: Cat-Napped to Love   did not actually happen to me. It was told to me by an acquaintance. I thought it sweet enough to be included.  And, the last story in this section is about Ranger, The Yellow Cat and is actually part of the history of the town in which I now live. Like the cat in Story Five, I did not know Ranger personally. Although I did not have the privilege of meeting yellow cat, I have heard so many stories about him that I felt compelled to write.

        I hope that my poems and stories offer an enjoyable experience and make the reader smile. If so, I will be exceedingly happy and I’ll know that my beloved cats, whether in my home and at my feet as I write or the ones that have passed over the Rainbow Bridge, will purr and smile!

Susan

1. Cat Songs

Some might think it strange

that a book of poems on cats and kittens

has in the title, ‘songs.’

Who, they might ask, has ever heard of a singing cat or kitty?

For me, ‘cat songs’ are no mistake or poetic license

and certainly not wrong.

For you see, their songs and music they do present

and for humans sometimes they’re meant.

And they encourage me to sing, to rhyme, to write.

Felines do sing or musically perform in their own cat way

and they can be quite lyrical, I have to say.

My one cat moves his water bowls

across the kitchen floor: sweet percussion.

It’s like a slide across a drum head in a two/four beat.

The ‘kitty-litter-dig-and-bury’ is much, much

more than  a few introductory bars.

It’s like drum brushes that go on and on.

with a four-four rhythm done in soft but clear staccato.

And when kitty’s finished, he looks around with bravado!

And my barn cat did sing a full duet with our mule

that ran up and down the octaves,

with sharps and flats as they sang.

My orange cat liked to sit on my feet

while I tried to memorize harp songs complete.

He purred and chirped along in time.

And I swear he flexed his claws

as if to pluck the strings in mime.

And then while swatting the cat toy hanging from its stand,

my cats have shown a rhythm: one, two, like a band.

And if a bell or chime is left around,

cat or kitty just might use it

as a cymbal with his paw to