Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats

Old Ella Mason keeps cats, eleven at last count,

In her ramshackle house off Somerset Terrace;

People make queries

On seeing our neighbor's cat-haunt,

Saying: ‘Something's addled in a woman who accommodates

That many cats.’

Rum and red-faced as a water-melon, her voice

Long gone to wheeze and seed, Ella Mason

For no good reason

Plays hostess to Tabby, Tom and increase,

With cream and chicken-gut feasting the palates

Of finical cats.

Village stories go that in olden days

Ella flounced about, minx-thin and haughty,

A fashionable beauty,

Slaying the dandies with her emerald eyes;

Now, run to fat, she's a spinster whose door shuts

On all but cats.

Once we children sneaked over to spy Miss Mason

Napping in her kitchen paved with saucers.

On antimacassars

Table-top, cupboard shelf, cats lounged brazen,

One gruff-timbred purr rolling from furred throats:

Such stentorian cats!

With poke and giggle, ready to skedaddle,

We peered agog through the cobwebbed door

Straight into yellow glare

Of guardian cats crouched round their idol,

While Ella drowsed whiskered with sleek face, sly wits:

Sphinx-queen of cats.

‘Look! there she goes, Cat-Lady Mason!’

We snickered as she shambled down Somerset Terrace

To market for her dearies,

More mammoth and blowsy with every season;

‘Miss Ella's got loony from keeping in cahoots

With eleven cats.’

But now turned kinder with time, we mark Miss Mason

Blinking green-eyed and solitary

At girls who marry—

Demure ones, lithe ones, needing no lesson

That vain jades sulk single down bridal nights,

Accurst as wild-cats.