Cats of Few Words

 "'The Meow Talk' app analyzes cat sounds against some 40 million 'meows'

in its database to suss out the meaning.'" --Emily Joshou, The Paw Print,
2025, p. 50

Minor meow: compact complaint, faint inquiry, note of ennui--
or all three. Brief

throated grumble: not urgent, it's just that things
could be a bit better.

Bared-teeth MEOW: Now! Hungry! Angry! Fusion
of sign- and sound-language. Wild,

whiplash yowl: Fight. Claws out. Neck-hair up.
Alarm. Alert the press! Call my lawyer!

Constricted throat-hiss. Sepentine. Next, claws
will rake. Meat and blood. Tactical sound-spear.

The yawn-meow, perhaps finished with groan-and
sigh. That cat's got those low-down napping blues.

For milennia, with such few sounds, this terse
lingo, cats have domesticated us.
Trained and bossed us. Been equal
if not superior to us. In each feline-infused
abode, cats sustain a coup d'etat,
lay down Cat Law.

hans ostrom 2025

What A Cat

This leopard's growl

stays in the throat, gargling,
gurgling like a cauldron.

This dabbed fur
paints an impression of
dappling sunlight on brush.

Sides of the lithe cat
expand, contract, as air
jumps into lungs, rides out

again over a rough pink
tongue, white theeth,
black lips. This staring leopard's

mouth and nose taste-smell
air, sorting known traces,
measuring strange mixtures.

This leopard, what a cat,
ah, what a creature,
what a miracle of Here.

hans ostrom 2024

Use Your Imagination

Your imagination uses you

when you use your imagination.
It's like walking a burly, leash-defying
dog. Like lecturing a cat
about excess leisure time.

Your imagination goes
where it will and then slobbers
on you. It will yawn, lick itself,
curl up, and sleep where you sleep--
and hiss if you try to move it.

hans ostrom 2024

Palms and Paws

He notes that lines cross his hands'

palms like broken hieroglyphs,
dried up canals, or lost roads
in a desert. Creases and carvings.
Clues of use. Scars. Upholstery
stiched after the fact. Sometimes,

he thinks, it's nice to hold a cat's
or dog's paw--those plump pads,
cushioning for leaps, lopes,
and sprints. Something sacred--
isn't there?--about palms and paws,
blooms on the stems of evolution,

epidermal note-paper, tiny
meadows of toil and calm.

hans ostrom 2024

Procession of Cats

Like a long silver ribbon,

the path from the moon

stretches to Earth tonight. And

down the path come the cats,

striding with their lazy lope.

Thousands of them, leaving

their lunar lair, returning

to this ground with moonlight

in their round unblinking eyes.

Arriving, they take their feline

time to scatter to homes,

hideouts, forests, plains,

jungles, mountains, and alleys.

Collecting Thoughts

In their abode, "I'm going

to go collect my thoughts"

became a code 

for "I'm going to take a nap."

The euphemism's like a cat's

toy or anything a feline feels

like batting around, slobbering on,

and then--before a nap--ignoring. 

Well, there those thoughts are,

spread out on a cloth in the mind.

Not very many, not of the highest

quality. Mostly worries, minor obsessions, 

images of flowers or birds--something

pleasant, maybe, to look at 

as one rolls over and feels

grogginess close the eyes

and fog the conscious mind. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Wine-Red Clouds at Twilight

Red-wine-soaked clouds

at dusk sing an intoxicated anthem

of light to summon such 

night creatures as raccoons,

bats, cats, and certain devotees

of Charles--Baudelaire

and Bukowski, those bad boys.

Sing, you wine-dark sacks 

of rain. Sing!

Hans Ostrom 2024

Cat's Eyes Revery

I left sleep's velvet shack,

walked across a field of dew-

doused feathers, arrived

at two identical round ponds,

both glowing pale green

like a cat's eyes. I

then picked up a couple spongy 

pale yellow orbs, palm-sized,

tossed one into one pond,

the other into the other.

They floated to the centers

of the ponds and turned dark.

The nearby forest, black

in shadow, purred loudly,

vibrating my ribs, cranium,

and feet. At my back came

a cold rough breeze. 

hans ostrom 2024

The Cat and I Recover

Recovery requires a bit

more attention from my wife

than usual: 
the cat's suspicions
start to swell into resentment.

He just doesn't like me, anyway,
in spite of my efforts to become
staff-person of the year. Now this.

She sets the steaming cup beside me.
He stares at this unfolding outrage
from the back of the couch, sunlight
streaming in behind him haloing his fur.

"How are you?" I ask him.
He stares. Stares, not blinking.
"I didn't get brain surgery to spite you,"
I say, sipping Earl Grey cautiously.
He lowers his head onto his paws
and closes his eyes.

hans ostrom 2023

© Feb 27    cats • recovery • surgery • earl • grey

Beauty Likes the Smell of Tuna

"To seek a satisfactory definition
of 'beauty,'" she said, "is as they say
like looking for a black cat in a black
room on a black night," and then
sipped from her third martini.
The bartender replied, "You just
have to remember to take
some tuna with you, then."


hans ostrom 2019

So Somewhere Sally

So somewhere Sally
got lost on vacation.

She was working too
hard at relaxing.

She heard a cat
mew-owing.

The sound brought
her back to here,

where she were, in
the blur of being somewhere.


hans ostrom 2018

Cookbook Unrest

I hear the cookbooks in the kitchen--
garrulous relics from pre-digital times.

They flop around on the floor. They
gossip about how and what I cook.

"Seriously," one of them says, "if he's
going to improvise all the time,

why consult us, why insult us?"
God damn their greasy pages.

The chefs who authored them: bah!
No one should be famous for cooking.

A cat has heard the books now.
He becomes a lynx and bounds

off into the kitchen.  It's quiet
in their all of a sudden.  That's right:

close yourselves, you recipe barns.
Digest your dissatisfaction.



hans ostrom 2017

Be Careful What

"Be careful what you wish for; you may get it."

--Old Saying, variously attributed

Be careful what you fish for. It
may catch you. Be careful who
you swish for (for whom), for
you may get swashed or even
buckled. Be careful what you
kiss for, for kissing is a kind of wish.

Be careful what you dish, no not
because you later may have to take
it, but because dishing carefully
is as we know the right thing to do.

"Be careful what you hiss for":
a feline admonition.



hans ostrom 2017

I Had My Eyes On You

I had my eyes on you. They were
those plastic ones from the novelty store.
I had them on your bare abdomen.
You were lying down (as

opposed to lying up) absorbing
sunheat. "I can't seem to take
my eyes off of you," I said.
Eyes closed, you said something

like "Huhnhmnm!" Which jolted
your stomach-muscles. My eyes
tumbled off onto what covers
Earth's crust. You put your eyes

on me--a warning glare. That's when
the devil showed up in the form
of the neighborhood's vicious
cat. I cast an eye at him--missed.

But he scampered. "Get you out
of here!"I yelled. "Same goes for you,"
you said to me. I gathered my eyes
and kept spinning in space on

this thing we call a planet.


hans ostrom 2016

Feline Disappointment

I aspire
to earn one day
the scorn expressed
sometimes
by certain cats I know.


hans ostrom 2016

"How to Be a Cat," by Hans Ostrom

Traveling Cat

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Traveling Cat

He was a traveling cat. He raced
and slunk, padded and trotted, sleek
and balanced, tendons full of
saved up speed. He moved silently
except for a hiss or a yowl now
and then, or a tipped over can:
never his fault. Yes, he was a

traveling cat, moving from this to
that, from at to at, detecting
motion, smooth as lotion, reading
the air, decoding sounds sent
from everywhere. Itinerant and

cool, self-possessed and freely
feline--leonine, nined up with lives,
cagey but uncaged, guileless and wise
was the traveling cat.

Sometimes A Cat

This summer, our household features not one but two cats, a cerebral Russian blue, female, who is 10 years old, and a tabby who may have some Norwegian Forest Cat in his background; he is one year old. Her name is Lisa Marie, after Elvis Presley's daughter, and his name is Jerry Garcia. Jerry is a native of California, very laid back but also impulsive. We sense that Lisa Marie desires him to be more thoughtful. Unless they are supervised, the cats must be kept separate. When I watch television, the tabby gets up in a nearby chair and watches it with me. --Just a couple guys watching the tube.


Sometimes A Cat

Sometimes a cat relaxes so much,
it forgets where it is. That is,
sometimes a cat, relaxed, remembers
nothing is any place and anywhere
is nowhere in particular. A cat's
among the most in-particular creatures,
a purely present artist of equilibrium,
a monarch of the moment, eyes like
twin comprehending moons.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Everybody Is A Critic

(image: canary, expressing an opinion)

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Everybody Is A Critic

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"That's not poetry," said the cat,

adding, "--it's mere doggerel."

Then the cat closed its eyes,

as if to say, "Go revise."

*

Poets, even cats are critics.

Your poems will bring you love

from neither human nor creature.

*

Feed the cat. Walk the dog.

Write your poetry. If you want

a friend, buy a canary. Just don't

line the cage with one of your poems.

*

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Ambidexterity

I've heard that genuine ambidexterity in humans is relatively rare, but I've read so little about the subject, I know virtually nothing about it. Neurologists have probably discovered some fascinating things on the subject.

One of my brothers is ambidextrous. He writes with his right hand, plays baseball left-handed, for example. He can do many things with equal acumen with either hand. Because he batted left-handed, he taught me to hit the baseball left-handed, from the right side of the plate. Therefore, I was one of those rare baseball players who "bats left, throws right" as they used to say on baseball cards. Otherwise, I was not a rare baseball player, if you get my drift. On my best day, I went 3-for-3, with one walk, and no errors in the outfield. Cool.

I am also a left-handed golfer, and a terrible one; nonetheless, I have a special interest in the careers of Bob Charles (retired now, I believe) and Phil Mickelson. The interesting thing about left-handed golfers is that they're not simply the mirror image of right-handed ones. They look different. Mickelson leans a certain way on putts and the short game that reveals he's left-handed. He wouldn't lean that way (even if it were the opposite way) if her were right-handed; that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

From my strictly amateur observations, cats appear to be ambidextrous--part of that fearful symmetry, I reckon, that Blake noticed.

Ambidextrous Cats

The ambidexterity of cats is a pleasure to watch,
like spats on feet of fabulous tap-dancers. Cats
have an answer for any motion they see. Sometimes
the response is just alert stasis. Other times, the
chase is on. Often two or more feet, claws unsheathed,
are involved effectively, symmetrically. The tail
gets bushy--"fat," we say. And hey, the whiskers
twitch. With precision, cats seize the which
that moved into view, using two paws equally.



Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom