Missing My Kitty
Miss Tiffany passed away 12 years ago (can't believe it's been that long!), but I still miss her. She was the prettiest cat in the world, and one of the crabbiest.
I got Tiffany from a no-kill shelter, where she was being bullied by the bigger cats. She learned all her bad habits from them. She hated all other cats and most people. She had already been named, or I would have called her something else — Killer or Slash or Bonnie N. Clyde.
My pet name for her was Meanness, so you can just imagine. She was a one-person cat (I was the person) until the baby was born. #4 daughter could do anything to that cat and get away with it.
I don't know why I'm missing Miss Tiff so much today, but I am. Here's a poem I wrote about her. It's one of the offerings in the Southern Indiana Writers' anthology BEASTLY TALES.
The Styrofoam Kitty
by Marian Allen
After sixteen human years of life
Miss Tiffany
– cat of the silent meow –
had no heft, no weight, no mass
except on stairs.
There, by force of will,
she mimicked elephants.
Or, when I napped on the couch,
she stepped
down
from her higher perch,
passing a cosmic pressure
through one small foot
into the space between two ribs.
WRITING PROMPT: Write about a one-person animal who accepts a second person into its world.
MA
