The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats/To a Cat

by John Keats

To a Cat

These verses were addressed by Keats to a cat belonging to Mrs. Reynolds of Little Britain, the mother of his friend John Hamilton Reynolds. Mrs. Reynolds gave the verses to her son-in-law, Tom Hood, who published them in his Comic Annual for 1830.

Cat! who has[t] pass'd thy grand clima[c]teric,
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 pr'ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me—and upraise
Thy gentle mew—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 has given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.