[1008] Cat

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian, <suresh@>:

The fat cat on the mat
  may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
  for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
  walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
  roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
  or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
  and tender men.
The giant lion with iron
  claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
  in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred,
  fleet upon feet,
that oft soft from aloft
  leaps upon his meat
where woods loom in gloom --
  far now they be,
  fierce and free,
  and tamed is he;
but fat cat on the mat
  kept as a pet
  he does not forget.

	-- J. R. R. Tolkien

A beautiful poem that's a bit more than it seems.  The Red Book has several
verses, some of which figure in the Lord of the Rings, or in the attached
stories / preludes / interludes and such.  Others are just scrawled in the
margins, for possible inclusion. JRR had scribbled "SG" in the margin when
he wrote the poem, suggesting that he meant to attribute it to Sam Gamgee.
The poem is also fairly traditional hobbit poetry (which deals a lot with
birds and beasts): rhythmic, with frequent alliteration and assonance,
making for an excellent nursery-rhyme sort of singalong song.

Still, it makes you think. Contrast a cute cat sleeping in front of a fire
with a wild, roaring and dangerous lion - and then have Tolkien solemnly
inform you in the last line that the cat hasn't forgotten her wild
ancestry...

Suresh.

[thomas adds]

Just a word on prosody: "Cat" may seem on first reading to be merely a
'hobbit nursery-rhyme', but the technical mastery it displays is nothing
short of staggering. The even-numbered lines rhyme with each other and also
internally; the odd-numbered ones have internal _triple_ rhymes. And all
this is done in lines of two and three feet respectively, leaving barely any
room for error; every single word (other than the placeholders -
prepositions conjunctions and auxiliaries) seems to be part of the rhyme
scheme. Incredible.

[Minstrels Links]

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien:
Poem #4, The Road Goes Ever On
Poem #46, Lament for Boromir
Poem #93, Eärendil was a mariner
Poem #142, He chanted a song of wizardry
Poem #220, Lament for Eorl the Young
Poem #257, Three Rings for the Elven Kings
Poem #318, Tall ships and tall kings
Poem #370, Troll sat alone on his seat of stone
Poem #440, Bregalad's Lament
Poem #643, The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon
Poem #736, The world was young, the mountains green

Cats, practical and otherwise:
Poem #165, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat  -- Edward Lear
Poem #167, Pangur Ban  -- Anon. (Irish, 8th century)
Poem #258, Macavity: The Mystery Cat -- T. S. Eliot
Poem #273, How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted  -- Guy Wetmore
Carryl
Poem #282, Fog  -- Carl Sandburg
Poem #401, To a Cat  -- Jorge Luis Borges
Poem #572, Mort aux Chats -- Peter Porter
Poem #574, Growltiger's Last Stand -- T. S. Eliot
Poem #575, To Mrs Reynolds' Cat -- John Keats
Poem #577, The Cat and the Moon -- William Butler Yeats
Poem #659, Poem -- William Carlos Williams
Poem #660, On a Night of Snow -- Elizabeth Coatsworth
Poem #661, Jubilate Agno -- Christopher Smart
Poem #662, Cat -- Jibanananda Das
Poem #663, A Child's Nightmare -- Robert Graves
Poem #674, Aunt Jennifer's Tigers -- Adrienne Rich
Poem #727, Milk for the Cat -- Harold Monro
Poem #955, Gus: The Theatre Cat -- T. S. Eliot

From: Reed C Bowman <hammerquill@>

Always thrilled to read Tolkien I've never seen before. Thanks, Suresh!

This piece reminds me strongly of (and may have been an inspiration for) 
an episode in Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_ series, called "A Dream of a 
Thousand Cats", in which a sort of prophet or proselyte among cats is 
wandering the world trying to convince other cats that once they were 
giants (elephant-size, not lion-size), and that by a concerted effort of 
dreaming, their one-time prey and playthings, humans, had reversed the 
sizes of humans and cats, and reduced the cats to pets. The prophet cat 
was trying to reverse this by getting a thousand cats to dream the same 
dream, of their return to their former state of dominance, all at once. 
But, as one of her listeners remarked, "I would like to see 
ANYONE--prophet, king or GOD--persuade a thousand cats to do ANYTHING at 
the same time. No, it will never happen."

RCB

From: Eleanor Durrant <e.durrant@>

Tolkien told us never to confuse applicability with allegory, and I daresay this poem is about a cat. But I 
like to apply it to the domesticated human being, working in an office, watching TV, fixing the aircon, but 
dreaming, perhaps, of fire, and the dark sky, the evening star, a spear in the hand, and grass under the 
feet.

Eleanor

From: "Megan Baker" <mbaker162@>

Every time I visit this site, I always read this poem. I am a devout
Tolkien fan, so I may be a abit biased, but this poem holds great power,
and goes far beyond beasts. Sam Gamgee always appeared to be a
respectable hobbit, never wanting to do anything truly exciting, or have
any adventures. But really, he was like Bilbo, and he loved adventures,
but he just needed a little push out the door. After his involvement
with the ring, and cleaning the Shire, his adventuresome side was quite
exhausted, but Sam, like the fat cat on the mat, he does not forget.

Megan

From: brucewilson@  Tue Jan 11 15:43:13 2005

Robert Frost, paraphrasing Horace, said that a poem is a thing
"beginning in delight and ending in wisdom."  'Fat cat on the mat' is
often the first time a child learning to read encounters rhyme, and from
this simple beginning comes one of the most profound meditations on
felis domesticus in English.

Anent the other writer's comment that it is equally applicable to the
'domesticated' human dreaming of 'heroic' times, I had never thought of
that, but it is applicable.