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| Natasha |
Margaret Atwood didn't just write "The Handmaid's Tale," you know. She's also a poet — 18 volumes published, as many collections of poetry as she has novels. So today being the 1st of February, I feel permitted to dig out her poem "February," which begins:
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed
We'll leave the watching hockey to her — Atwood is Canadian, after all, she doesn't have much choice in the matter. The poem — I can't print it in full, but you can read it here, on the Poetry Foundation site — is mostly about the cat, on its surface. Lounging in bed, on her chest,"breathing his breath/of burped-up meat and musty sofas."
Perfect, right? But of course the poem is much more than that. The cat is a metaphor — plainly stated — for the male aggressiveness that is such a leitmotif through Atwood's writing.
Perfect, right? But of course the poem is much more than that. The cat is a metaphor — plainly stated — for the male aggressiveness that is such a leitmotif through Atwood's writing.
It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run.
Can't argue that, not with President Grab-'Em-By-the-Pussy turning impotent geriatric rage into the driver of American policy, foreign and domestic.
The poem made me miss our Natasha, who we lost in June, an absence deeply felt — she was 15, and to this day I'll hear a purr-like-sound, or a certain kind of rustle, and look up, expectant, then disappointed. It was the very end, and mercy demanded we put her down. But also a sort of foreshadowing that would look trite in literature, but life has no problem grinding in your face. Natasha's parting was so quickly replaced by other, greater losses — my mother died two days later — that I never even bothered to write about it here before. "My cat died and then my mother and then my cousin and a couple cherished friends" seems straying into bathos. We all got woes. Suck it up, buttercup.
The poem made me miss our Natasha, who we lost in June, an absence deeply felt — she was 15, and to this day I'll hear a purr-like-sound, or a certain kind of rustle, and look up, expectant, then disappointed. It was the very end, and mercy demanded we put her down. But also a sort of foreshadowing that would look trite in literature, but life has no problem grinding in your face. Natasha's parting was so quickly replaced by other, greater losses — my mother died two days later — that I never even bothered to write about it here before. "My cat died and then my mother and then my cousin and a couple cherished friends" seems straying into bathos. We all got woes. Suck it up, buttercup.
Atwood ends by beautifully capturing a situation very familiar to all cat owners, though none of us would think to express it so beautifully, or at all, followed by a directive I plan to repeat daily until April.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
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