We’d lost our over-anxious cat two months previously.
Eddie had gotten too happy to see us.
She couldn’t contain herself.
As the car pulled into the driveway
She ran closer and closer and closer
Until she was none.

Through the mystical magnetism of an open porch,
Bentley appeared two months later.
Like Eddie, a grey female but with a
Distinctive crook, two inches
Off the tip of her tail.

Bentley became Cuddles in one of those
Transmorphic occurrences that happens
When there’s a five year old child in the house.

Cuddles was an affectionate cat.
She loved people.
Loved, loved, loved people.
But not cars.
So she flirted with
The fullest extension of her purported ninth life.

With a fully, fertile (if tail-crooked)
Female on the prowl, it wasn’t long
Before a big ol’ Tom passed through.

We never named the Tom.
But if we had, it probably
Would have been some pirate name like
Black Beard or Cross-Hearted Jack.
You see, bulked-out, black Tom had his
Left eye scratched out.
A tough old scrapper, fresh in from
The open seas, he must have been.

A season or two passes,
A dog or two sets up habitation
And we grow to know Cuddles as a possessive sort.
She’s only mildly put out
Until some two-legged acquaintance
Bends over to pet the drooling barker.
Then someone is hissy pissed.

After a few altercations
(In which the feline always wins)
Cuddles settles upon ambush as her primary strategy.
She stretches out midway up the front porch steps
Daring all canine ascent.

Another season passes
And with it, another visiting Tom.
This one a big yellow.

As fate would have it
Yellow Tom warranted a pirate name too –
Spiteful Dane or Yellow-Spleen McGintty.
You see, this Tom, like the last,
Had his left eye scratched out.
Presumably a shipmate of the previous piratey suitor.

Love and jealousy being what it was,
Cuddles allowed the yellow Tom to stay around,
But she maintained vigilant position
Between her people and her suitor.
In the annals of cat connivery
The tactic is known as affectual interference.

Five years down the road and a
Third big Tom appears.
And, you guessed it,
Its left eye is scratched out.

Now we’re pretty smart for people,
But we have yet to figure out the commonality
That introduces so many of our feline friends
To this life of monoscopic vision.
The pirate myth was fun for awhile –
But not so convincing over time.

Damn it all.
Damn it all.
We feel sorry for ‘em.
This must be a rough neighborhood for an old Tom cat.

Cuddles rubs against my shins, purring quietly,
As I stare out at the pasture –
Pondering the mystery
From my front porch steps.

One Eyed Tom
© 2009 Mark Pearce