Jenga (i.m. 2004-2021)

 

Jenga

Not a four walls enthusiast.
His were the scarps and highways
of the garden,
the shrubs above him
high as Nordic pines.
Mid-morning by the summer-house
he’d turn from whatever labours
the cat-world confects
and just sit,
then maybe take on a fence-post
or have an unavailing lick
at one of his off-white paws.

Jem, I called him for a bit,
but mostly we settled for Jen.
Jenga was thrown round him
like a kid’s brute embrace
by whoever had him before he arrived,
an RSPCA two-for-one
with a sister who died years ago.
To begin with he stayed a good seven days
in the sideboard’s under-shadow,
fearing the rough-house would simply resume
in this new, just as frightening land.

The evening after his sister died
he patrolled the living room
chair by chair and cover by cover,
sensing that the world now nursed
a black-and-white-shaped absence.
Before much longer
our lonely tabby might search the same,
still hearing in her own way
his morefoodnow plaint.
And maybe she’ll wait in a room’s open country
for the off-white clip round her ear
which he’d deliver at full-bowl time,
and which, in the ether behind her eyes,
he may keep on doling without a care
from whatever pocket Eden
now protects him.