This month’s Versed in Florida is with Hunt Hawkins - Chair of the English Department at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He previously held the same position at Florida State University. He earned both his Masters and his Ph.D. from Stanford. Hawkins specializes in Modern British Literature, Postcolonial Literature, and poetry writing. He’s published two books and many articles and poems including today’s - about his late Cat named Jack. He told WGCU’s Amy Tardif how he gets his muse.
My Cat Jack
For I will consider my Cat Jack.
For he is not like me.
For he wakes me in the morning.
For he proclaims himself with a yowl.
For when I stroke his head, he treadles my chest like a kitten getting milk.
For his mother is Kasha, his grandmother is Pippin, and his great-grandmother is
Xanthippe, all living.
For he is Siamese.
For he cavorts under the sheets while I am making the bed.
For he stretches by kicking back his hind legs like a skier.
For he licks one paw clean, then tucks his head under that paw, and so the other.
For he sits on my desk and lays his ears down and appears to be an owl.
For he chases the balled-up poems that I discard on the floor and so enjoys them
despite their imperfections.
For he can move each ear by itself.
For from the side I can see through his eyes like water.
For he is easy in this life.
For he does not think ahead to death.
For he carries no cash.
For he does not have any pockets.
For he saves nothing, not even a bone.
For he eats what I give him, mainly Friskies.
For he is unemployed.
For even in the cat box, he maintains his dignity and squats very straight.
For he does not know who the president is.
For he comforts my mind, which ceaselessly rolls in doubt and fear.
For in the asylum Christopher Smart loved his Cat Jeoffrey.
For in a rational century Rousseau doted on feline Ninette.
For in exile Vladimir Lenin had a cat for a friend.
For in fame T. S. Eliot respected all cats.
For young Jack is a small lion in my house.
For he looks out the window for birds.
For he listens to the walls for mice.
For, despite everything, he is not maddened by domesticity.
For he leaps with real pleasure after a ribbon tied to a string.
For he inflates his tail.
For he fights with his back feet.
For in dry weather he is a bastion of electricity.
For he can find obscure heat.
For he curls about himself with his head upside-down.
For he sleeps.