Love in the Colour of Orange

Saw on two separate occasions this week two orange tabby cats -- one lounging in a store window, the other narrowly escaping becoming taxi traction. Reminded me of one of my cats, long gone, and then this overly sentimental poem in his memory. But I don't care. I loved that cat more than I can ever reasonably explain.

___________

Simon was an orange cat.

An orange unreal, a colour with a crayon number
faint pale lines of weaker orange traced
a tiger design against his shimmering pumpkin fur – Persian
royalty in his past.

An Individual by choice in a house of cats who shunned
his love-all demeanour, he never tired of trying
to win fellow feline affections –
overtures rebuked once the others grew bored of his
rough-tongue grooming, or attempts to join
the dog pile of cats on the blue-leather chair.

Without choice then Simon became a person. The lone
cat allowed, he slept in my bed, his head lodged beneath my chin.
He would lay on my chest, borrowing the rhythm there.
And only then did Simon twill the purring of a cat’s contentment. Asleep.

It was I, gave the order to end him, although another
wielded the executioner’s hypodermic staff.
Trusting, clinging to my chest as I held him, Simon forced his head
under my chin. And awake, his trilling came. And awake
he went with me, despite his historical alarm
at the scent of veterinarian science.

Steven S. Heipel