AN OLD MAN AND HIS CAT

He felt so bad when the old cat died,
Well, at least, he thought it had died,
It disappeared in the dark one night,
And never returned to his side.

He never admitted how much that cat meant,
Not really a man-thing to do,
But, widowed now and alone in the house,
A rapport came about for the two.

It was the woman's job to care for the cat,
To brush it and see it was fed,
A bit of a nuisance, it seemed to the man,
But he never wished the cat dead.

The cat once brought a mouse in the house,
Which escaped and ran loose in the place,
But the havoc it wrought was shortly forgot,
When erased by the cat's smiling face.

The man couldn't remember at night which was right,
Should the cat come in or go out?
He solved his dilemma with a hole in his door,
Then lost track of the cat's whereabouts.

At the market, he learned, he wasn't too sure
Of what kind of cat food to buy,
The tiny, round tins or the big, flat cans,
And no way to clarify.

He'd go, "Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo"
To help with his decision,
One thing, for sure, the cat never starved,
Or was hurt by malnutrition.

Sometimes at night the man sat in his chair,
And dozed while watching T V,
The cat sat on his feet - not on his lap,
Cause that's where it wanted to be.

When the man went to bed, the cat went outside,
But returned to the house before morn,
It then curled up at the foot of the bed,
And kept the man's feet nice and warm.

But one morning the old cat didn't come back,
The man called and searched in vain,
It simply had disappeared in the night,
And never was seen again.

The man was sad; he missed the cat,
Though he never admitted he cared,
But he couldn't go in or out, it seemed,
Without glancing about everywhere.

The man then decided that was enough,
No more cats for him from hereon,
Nuisances, headaches, flea-ridden pests,
And worthless old vagabonds.

But nights when he sat and dozed in his chair,
And then crawled into his bed to sleep,
He was fully aware no cat was there,
To warm up his icy cold feet.

Then, late one night, sometime before morn,
As he fitfully slept in his bed,
He felt the bed shake. Good Grief! An earthquake?
And he pulled his quilt over his head.

While cringing in fear, a cold sweat appeared,
And like ice, his poor feet had become,
Then came big bumps and thumps on the bed,
That scared him so much he grew numb..

When things settled down, he peeked out and around,
And he saw, to his great surprise,
The cat had come back ... with six kittens intact,
And brought them to him as a prize.

"Good Grief!" he thought,"What an awful lot!
What shall I do with them?"
He soon discovered they made warm covers,
And his feet never were cold again.

How apropos for cold tootsies and toes,
Plus, an extra cat for a lap,
What a pur-r-fect end to a tale of woe,
About an old man and his cat.