Patches
"I don't have a picture of My Patches. She is still missed. Those she sent me, Divot and Baffy, add joy and love, but even they do not replace her. She was so very special. As are they all. I do have these poems I wrote for her..."
Two little girls helped when I picked her out
from four who called that tiny cage their home.
For more than twenty years she stayed, no doubt,
surprised to have so little time alone.
She grew used to our family’s strange ways:
no laps and her own room in which to sleep;
for asthma plagued my youngest in those days;
"whose kitty?" fights could almost make me weep.
When human kids left home to go to school,
I still had My Patches right by my side:
her needs shaped all my days; she was no fool -
the net she caught me in was very wide.
Now to the Rainbow Bridge My Patch has flown
My heart is torn and I am now alone.
~ Margy
I took you to Virginia and you rode by my side:
so very old, so thin, so brave, so good;
you could not understand so long a ride;
forgot to watch and napped as all cats should.
I worried so that you were feeling hot
or that the window wind blew hard on you,
if you would like Virginia or would not;
the changes were for both of us so new.
You didn’t seem to mind our new blue home;
you seemed to like to lie on kitchen tile
especially when the sun forgot to roam
and heated them to suit your catlike style.
But now the kitchen’s empty; you’re not there;
The tile is cold and so is my despair.
~ Margy