The Tenth Life of Alice’s Cat
December 14th, 2008 at 5:47 pm (Humourous)
I suppose if I had to choose the poem which I enjoy performing the most then it would have to be this one. … And, in this case, “The Tenth Life of Alice’s Cat” is based on a true story.
The “Alice” in question is a very good friend of mine who lives in the southern seaside resort of Brighton .. in a house that is home to a vertitable menagerie of animals plus, at times, a coterie of lodgers too. The lodgers have gone these days .. but it was one of the last, a post graduate chemistry student from the nearby university, who made the observation which inspired this piece of poetic fun.
A few months previously, Alice had buried her pet cat “Oscar” after the animal had passed away from old age (much to the relief of her dog I should add). Oscar had held court in Alice’s house for a feline lifetime, and I was among the many who missed him. It wasn’t because he was all that friendly towards me, mind you, for he was aloof to the point of rudeness. No, it was just something about his self confidence that inspired a sort of grudging admiration.
Anyway, to get to the point, it was about six months after Oscar’s death that the new lodger (who’d never seen him) described in perfect detail the apparition she’d just seen in the kitchen. In turn this emboldened the other lodgers to speak up and admit that they, too, had seen the ghost of Oscar .. always in the same place .. lurking near the fridge. We can only presume that he hadn’t yet found anyone naïve enough to feed him yet on the spirit side.
But, I ask you, is that greed or is that GREED ? Not content with eight more lives than the average human being, it struck me that Oscar was in danger of overstepping the mark just a little if he planned on a tenth performance, in the spirit world. There comes a point, surely, when cat and human alike have to make way for others.
So there was the titlle and the inspiration. The rest, of course, is poetry.
