I was on the toilet when he brought me your corpse. Instead of reading the back of a shampoo bottle, I had the sheer disgust of hearing your bones give way beneath feline fangs.
The squelching of your blood made mine run cold. I wonder about your life prior to your savaging.
Did you eat the chocolates from Christmas trees?
Did you have big dreams?
I know that Barney (your killer) flung your limp self fifty feet in the air, and I do apologise, but he just gets so excited!
Robert Burns wrote to your kind in 1785:
‘But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane.’
And I must ask:
Why do you chase the shadows of danger? Didn’t they teach you anything at rodent school?
I’ll eat my hat if you weren’t too busy devouring sugar cubes under your desk. How do we look to you, I ponder. I mean, there you are, playing dead, when all of a sudden two globes come to dissect your spirit. Our looming bodies cradle you.
Listen, Mouse, Barney is the most gentle love-bug, but to him you are just another blade of grass. However, you and I are most alike. We are both plump and at odds with the rest of the planet.
How do we navigate these celestial planes?
I see you run up the clock with your button eyes. But the cats; the cats drag you back!
From the throne I saw the best mice of my generation destroyed by tooth and claw. Under the cloak of darkness they pounce upon you: to feast and feast and feast.
Mournfully Yours,
Courtenay,
The cat’s mother.
Courtenay Schembri Gray is a poet, fiction writer, and playwright from the North of England. Her work often deals with the macabre and surreal: https://linktree.com/courtenaywrites