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Cat Lady
She’s outside calling the cat again – Flora, Flora
she named it Flora as it arrive in her garden
wriggled in between flower beds through a hole
in the fence. It was a female, white with tan and
black markings, soft as a ball of wool
She cuddled it, fed it until spying the dog it mewed
pitifully and she had to release it back to the street.
On holiday in Barcelona, Rome, Nairobi, she feeds
stray cats from restaurant tables, birds too she throws
them morsels, smiles and coos as they flutter, hop, grab
It’s compassion she claims, when she was a young
mother she divorced her abusive husband, fled with
two young children to Sri Lanka where she fell in love
with pottery. In heat of creative passion she sent the
children to an orphanage where they grew up strangers
speaking a foreign language, who looked at her
with downcast eyes on her infrequent visits
Flora, she calls, Flora, and from the bushes that
flank the fence two different cats arrive, wet, fur
matted, green eyed, they gobble the food she puts out
and then bound off back to some dustbin refuge
She’s going to cage them, take them to a vet, have
them spayed, castrated. She buys a superior brand
of cat food at the local store. Flora will be back she
thinks and then I’ll tame her, make her mine.
© Johnmichael Simon
2012
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