"To My Cat with an Eating Disorder"

by Alice N. Persons
from Never Say Never (Moon Pie Press)
Reprinted with permission by NPR.


You were thrown out of a moving vehicle
on a dirt road
in chilly winder downeast Maine,
little fur scrap, and I hope you don't
carry that memory with you,
but the hunger, the deep fear
that you'll never see food again
is still there five years later
when you are huge and sleek,
a sumo Buddha of a cat.

I've seen you, after a big meal,
heave yourself from a sound sleep,
pad into the kitchen, launch your bulk
onto the counter, and check the food supply,
then crouch there chewing and chewing,
green eyes empty, concentrating
on your burden, your compulsion,
doggedly eating, whether you want to or not.

There are stories about Holocaust or
Depression survivors whose refrigerators
and pantries are always full, just in case,
how some of them still wake in the night
and check their abundant supplies,
run their hands over the packages,
or eat without hunger, just because they can.

Cat, I stand in the dark kitchen
stroking your broad back,
wishing I could banish the fears
of one small, common creature,
those bad dreams that awaken you,
that hollow place in your memory
which can never be filled.

I was very happy to hear about Belinda Stronach leaving the (Regressive) Conservative Party.

"No man, but a blockhead, ever wrote, except for money." - Samuel Johnson

"Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much - surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be ashamed." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.' "
- Hilaire Belloc

"All the world's a stage, but some of the players have been very badly miscast. "
- Oscar Wilde

"In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach." - Oliver Goldsmith


(Thanks for sending me these wonderful quotations, Laurel!)