…On Animals

EASY PREY

by Carey Lenehan

Cat sitting on my table
Her back to me like a
Furry little vase with pointed ears
An eliptical perfection
Tail tucked away with
feline chasteness
She watches the birds
And other cats
Through the double glazing
She can’t get out
They can’t get in but
she watches them anyway.
Just in case

She’s almost sleeping
Her eyes half shut
But her whiskers twitch
To let me know she is awake
She will wait until I move
Pretending to be a cat
ornament
And then she will follow me
Wailing, into the kitchen
To pester me for food
Because hunting
is too much like hard work
and I
am easy prey

*****

Early Morning Surprises

by Carey Lenehan

There’s a moment when you know
that something isn’t right
when the automatic count
doesn’t tally.
Fifteen puppies, counted,
seven dogs, that’s right,
just three horses, easily marked,
switching early flies off their flanks
with winter wooly tails
and of course,
Annie, safe in her pen,
eating clover… with her small cat friend.
Other cats around, seen and noted,
child awake, dressed and oated,
no surprises so far…

Sometimes there are new arrivals
cheeping chicks, a wobbling foal
Puppies curled against their mum
Extra bodies often come,
and so,
all the time, totting up the numbers
making a visual notation
of dependents, in rotation
but
there’s that moment
Like a missed heartbeat
when for a second
you are alive without breath
and you realise
Something is wrong.

He came in the night,
slunk like lava
through my straw defences
and plucked them
one by one,
from their perching sleep,
incinerating life to keep his own,
drugging them into silence
with the weight of his grip
and then floated them away,
one by one,
leaving barely a trace
until he was done,
sneaking so silently
on the raft of morning dew,
’neath the nose of the dogs,
just a feather or two
left,
in memoriam.

Yesterday there were twelve
Today there are two…
and a half,
for let us not forget
the black cockerel who plagued my kitchen
stealing the dog food
and dirtying the surfaces with his
greedy feathered feet,
who I had sworn to neck
for his relentless invasion.
The fox beat me to it.
Necked him good, but not quite good enough
That pesky rooster?
He’ll be dead by sundown….

To the chickens I used to know,
Next time around…
Learn to fly
Then the fox won’t get you….

*****

Deer Physio

by Carey Lenehan

One step, two step, wobble, hop
She needs me, she needs me,
she needs me not
Three legs moving, one raised in the air
Moving at random but going nowhere

She’s desperately trying to return to the woods
She can see them, can smell them
Oh, she’d go if she could,
but for now, fifteen hops, that are almost a run
with me running behind, one hand on her bum

Legs a tremble, ears alert, breath rasping, eyes red,
sides heaving, I carry her back to her bed.
She curls up contented, spirits undented,
licks my hand and decides to eat brambles instead,

If she could tell me her thoughts,
I know what she’d say,
Thanks for the food, for the care that you gave
But as soon as my legs learn to obey
You know that I’m going backto those woods someday…