Cat (1987)

Ted Hughes

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Links Off

You need your Cat.
When you slump down
All tired and flat
With too much town

With too many lifts
Too many floors
Too many neon-lit
Corridors

Too many people
Telling you what
You just must do
And what you must not

With too much headache
Video glow
Too many answers
You will never know

Then stroke the Cat
That warms your knee
You’ll find her purr
Is a battery

For into your hands
Will flow the powers
Of the beasts who ignore
These ways of ours

And you’ll be refreshed
Through the Cat on your lap
With a Leopard’s yawn
And a Tiger’s nap.

Image © Ted Hughes by Anne-Katrin Purkiss © National Portrait Gallery, London

Poem © by Ted Hughes from Collected Poems for Children, published by Faber and Faber Ltd (2008). With permission from the publisher.