The coffee shop cat, strung out on the table,
stretched out on its back, pawing a dangling cable,
had been burnt by the bulb after trying to grab it
and was now screaming meows
having a hissing and spitting fit.
All occupants of the shop flocked over to watch him
whilst we all stood around laughing and toking,
goading him on by cheering and joking,
thickening the air around us
from all our smoking.
But the cat was so angry,
it just didn’t even care.
It was too wrapped in its trip
to know that any of us were there.
We tried to mellow it out by blowing smoke at it
whilst others teased with straws and tentatively poked it.
But the cat didn’t react to us trying to provoke it,
nor to the marijuana nirvana that enveloped it
and this continued, to the amusement of the crowd,
until the cat was in the centre of a cannabis cloud.
Then in the mist of the smoke
and the midst of the laughing,
the cat fixed sharp
and began slowly pacing,
proudly purring; a dramatic switch of character
as if he’d accomplished his task
and emerged the victor.
Purring loudly, with his tail in the air,
he paused by individuals to authoritatively stare
until he reached a woman with a monumental joint
and became catatonically fixated at that specific point
and from then on,
regardless of how much smoke we blew at it,
and despite our movements that to it were erratic,
it remained completely locked on to the end of the spliff
without a sound or movement or even a sniff.
So then,
when the woman lent forwards and blew smoke through her lips,
it engulfed the cat in a cannabis eclipse
and when the smoke cleared,
the cat lay there blitzed,
lying curled on its side
whilst its tail just twitched.
It wasn’t looking anywhere, or at anyone, anymore;
its eyes were open but looked red and sore
and as one by one, people went back to before,
I sat back by the cat with my note book and draw
and decided to write about what I just saw
whilst my inspiration looked lazily at me
with an outstretched paw
and as I daydreamed with my eyes open in the cat’s direction,
thinking about the words to use to depict its subjection,
I was distracted by the image of my own reflection
in its glazed over eyes amidst its blasé complexion
and I thought to myself, “What a beautiful creature,
the coffee shop cat; what an entertaining feature.
I wonder what it thinks about if it’s a constant stoner?
The amount it gets stroked,
I bet he doesn’t know his owner!
I’d love to take him home with me,
but how would I sneak him out, though?
And what if on the plane he went completely psycho!”
He rolled onto its feet again
and, mesmerized, I watched intently
as it stretched its back and yawned
and then turned to look right at me,
with a suspenseful expression.
I stared straight at the cat,
expecting him to go mental again,
or something like that.
But instead he appeared confident
in his coffee shop habitat
and looked back at me, irritably
and said
“What the fuck you lookin’ at!?”
