#FlashFictionFriday: The Cat was a Bastard

I love rhyming poems especially those with a simple, traditional feeling meter. And, every now and then I get in a silly mood, a moment where a single line will stick in my head, a simple, off-the-wall sentence that becomes something upon which to hang a comic poem. When that happens, all bets are off and this sort of thing is the result.

In this case, it was the stray memory of a joke my late father frequently told (and my mother deplored), “Home is where you can spit on the floor and call the cat a bastard.” This inappropriate oneliner morphed in my head to: The Cat was a Bastard, an equally inappropriate poem, displaying my low origins and affection for gallows humor.

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The Cat was a Bastard

 

Around the corner and down the lane

Hurtled my car through hard, driving rain.

And from the brush near the verge of the road

Came running a cat, now dead as a toad.

 

I stopped the car, to check on the corpse,

A cottage did see, the cat’s home of course.

And bearing the body through pouring down rain,

I pressed on the doorbell, and then pressed again.

 

A lady quite elderly, shriveled, and old,

Opened the door and eyed me, quite cold.

“Your cat, I presume?” I gravely inquired.

“He’s met his end, with the aid of my tire.”

 

Her gaze was quite steely, as coolly she said,

“And what’s it to me that the old wretch is dead?

“I always knew his would be a bad end,

“His tomcatting ways he never would mend.”

 

Mystified, I thought an error had been made

For she looked like a cat-lady, proper and staid.

“Are you speaking of this cat, Madame?” I said,

“This flat-headed cat, who surely is dead?”

 

“The cat was a bastard,” the woman replied.

“We’re glad to see the old lecher has died.

“An untidy end for the bastardly cat,

“The lazy old thing who ne’er caught a rat.”

 

Shocked, I just stared, then set down the corpse

And turned to depart, bewildered, of course.

Let this be a lesson to tomcats who stray,

Don’t cross the road on a cold, rainy day.

 

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The Cat was a Bastard © Connie J. Jasperson 2017, All Rights Reserved

Stock Illustration:

Boss Cat ID 72054715 © Mariia Sigova | Dreamstime.com