Poem

It was an icy day
we buried the cat
then took her box
and set match to it

in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

William Carlos Williams

There is a rat rotting under my floorboards. We levered them up and discovered droppings and scratch marks. The rat man has put down some warfarin.

I remember seeing a dead cat. I was walking along the pavement into town one winter morning and saw a trail of blood leading from the kerb to a patch of grass. The cat had been knocked down - presumably by a car - and had staggered across the pavement to die. One of its eyes was hanging out, and I was astonished by how large it was. When I saw a human eye being removed, or "enucleated" at work, we kept it in a plastic pot and it was quite small. But when one looks at a cat skull, it is interesting to see how far back the socket goes. A cat needs to react far more quickly than a human, and its eyesight is doubtless a lot sharper.

photo courtesy of Forest & Kim Starr (USGS)