"Owning" A Beast

Cats are like doorways,
the doorways they curl around,
because they exist on the edges,
between realities, this world and that,
civilized and beast.

They join us here for dinner,
while, with full bellies,
they nevertheless rip apart a mouse
for play.

They join us in our world, giving us the impression
they belong to it
and leaving suddenly to remind us
they do not.

When we try to coerce
their 'belonging' (or if they even sense we do)
if we forget, assume they are civilized,
their claws lash and eyes flash
in an instant to remind us -
they are certainly, indignantly, not,
not at all civilized.

How ridiculous. How perfectly preposterous.
Humans, such fools.


(Copyright, Refcah Manski 2009)