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I, Sirs, am Thomas Hardy’s cat,
Who, ever pensive, used to wait
His daily, absent-minded pat
Within the study at Max Gate.

Oft-times I’d see him search askance
The middle-distance, to unloose
Some ravell’d knot of circumstance
Before it wove into a noose,

Or, basking in a reverie,
Observe his hunched form scribbling dim
As light would dance from tree to tree
Across the grass, un-traced by him.

Then if, to soothe the darkening day
I’d nuzzle by hid hand awhile,
He’d brush me wordlessly away
Uncomforted by stroke or smile.

“Cats are aloof”, he once opined,
Apt merely for a minor part,
The playthings of the outward mind:
A dog alone can tear the heart.”

That smote the soul of one whose mute
And unforced friendship had not swerved.
My kitten joy being reft of fruit
At morn, by eve I’d grown reserved,

A hanger-on, decayed and old,
Unhandy but to sit and brood,
A pensioner to slight and scold
As suited best his keeper’s mood.

Yet that great Ironist, whose cranks
So occupied my owner’s scan,
Reserved a pun to pique the ranks
Of shallow, purblind, thankless Man:

For when my master’s life was claimed
By Him who numbers every bird,
Those who esteemed his verses framed
That Hardy’s heart should be interred

Near home, secluded from the great –
And to that end, one fall of dusk,
The doctor, tired and calling late
Performed upon the earthly husk

The heart’s withdrawal reverently,
Caching it in a place at large,
The remnant of mortality
Being earmarked for the Abbey’s charge.

But I, un-solaced, left to freeze,
A sad old form, starved and despised,
Compelled to hunt, while obsequies
Unknown to me were solemnised,

That night stole through the outhouse door
And found the viand on a tray.
I dragged it to the waiting floor
And gorged myself thereon till day.

And while with shrill cries they unveiled
My spiteless crime for all to see,
And all its wantonness retailed,
I slept contented in a tree.

In Afterwards, a work he’d penned
In contemplation of the stasis
Of nature, which, despite his end,
Would still persist in his old places,

He mourned that none would tend the small
Wild things he loved, or ease their woes…
He need not have repined at all –
Be sure, I soon took care of those!

A dog may tear his master’s heart
In metaphor, I grant you that –
But truth will ever out-strip art,
Or so says Thomas Hardy’s cat.

© Colin Bailey, August 2007