startled me into you a cat with piercing eyes that said stop
I said to my wife “I keep coming back to this one.”
we were looking for a cat to adopt and bring to our home with rooms and stairs and wonderful windows
we took your brother also everyone said you loved to be together and they were right you and your brother are almost perfect companions to each other and to us
and the home has changed just for you
with special scratch proof screens so you can smell the air in spring, summer, and fall and everywhere perches, toys, nests special cardboard boxes and under the piano bench a paper cave
cat adventures
tearing after each other from one end of the house to the other and exploring a newly discovered wild world in the basement
and the seasons
at the end of the time of always open windows preparations pots and pans and then turkey and every other smell you can imagine emerging from everywhere and from guests and their food flooding into the house and in winter more commotions and collections of people a Christmas tree and lots of wrapping paper to attack and birds outside gathering around bird feeders always different through two blizzards and after
still your eyes can stop me
and your brother who also deserves his own poem standing on a counter reaches out with his paw to also stop me so we can rub heads and sometimes get a hug
Thomaston Maine January 18, 2018
© 2018 William C. Eberle