Poem by John Keats

To Mrs Reynolds’s Cat

Cat! who has pass'd thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy'd? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears - but prythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me - and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick;
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists, -
For all the wheezy asthma - and for all
Thy tail's tip is nick'd off - and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is thy fur as when the lists
In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall. 

1. On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt
2. Bards of Passion and of Mirth
3. Specimen of Induction to a Poem
4. Calidore
5. To (“Hadst Thou Liv’d in Days of Old…”)

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