Girlcat, we've known each other for twenty years or less.
We've seen the men come and go in my life like the expensive twinkle on cut glass.
My eyes watched cold in their surveillance.
The men nodded and told lies.
I had my son Amos who carried you back from the pet shop in his baby hands.
You meowed and my heart fell apart.
Cleo my daughter carried your lover Boycat.
I watched with tender love and appalled silence as you hate the pigeons that fell off the bridge at Stamford Brook tube station.
As you strolled, rolling your back, redolent with loud cries and smells of sexual initiation.
Girlcat, you were the catipuss whore of Goldhawk Road.
Insatiable, terrible, raucous, a ball-breaking feminist cat.
You watched Boycat take his last stroll onto the Green Belt to die.
My heart was breaking, but you didn't even say goodbye, Girlcat.
You turned your back now on sex, on love except for me.
You're my albacat. I carry you.
You have catzheimer's. You get lost on a chair.
You scream at me and I swear that I love you.
You stamp at me and I swear that I love you.
You stamp and rage and yell all the things that I have thrown men out for.
You smack the dogs on their noses and you draw blood.
But, Girlcat, I love your furry warmth,
your lovely black and white face,
watching you lie sprawled on my chair,
purring close to me, your belly like old leaky bellows.
I clean up your shit.you miss every time and your kidneys are in great condition.
You piss all over the floor and I walk in it in a dozed sleeped-dance to get an early cup of tea in my kitchen.
Blissfully alone in an Italian forest just me, four dogs, and three cats.
Girlcat, you're too old to live and too mean to die.
Next to my aching heart you will always lie.