OSH

OSH

Myra puddled among beige cats.

Beige herself, she disappears

except for her bat-ears looming

above the crowd. The other cats

welcome Myra’s alien features:

elongated head, spindle legs,

whippet tail. She’s popular,

and fecund, once, giving birth

to more than twenty litters

of Oriental Shorthair kittens.

After eight years, too exhausted

to continue, she faced extinction;

but the shelter queen snatched her

from her indifferent owner’s grasp.

She’s the only sample of her breed

among a hundred and fifty cats—

yet unadoptable, unwilling

to live in a house lacking cats

enough to shield her from the world.

Five years huddled here among

cats glad to have her. Sometimes

she withdraws to the under-parts

of a tattered upholstered chair

and snores her old lady snore

alone in the dark. More often

we find her cuddled with her friends,

all complementing her color.

We brush and feed her as if she

alone occupied this shelter;

and the sixty other cats

in this room gaze upon her

with a certain satisfaction,

as if her exotic framework,

more like a monkey’s than a cat’s,

flattered by comparison.