Menagerie De Trois

by Thomas Vaughan Jones
(Liverpool UK)

A Tale of Tragedy and Star Crossed Lovers

Millicent Maybelle Mortenson flashed golden yellow eyes,
rebuffed her Persian suitor; Ignored his feline sighs.
His coat was of the finest silk; His eyes the brightest blue;
but Millie loved another and no other swain would do.

She loved the scruffy tom cat who strode her garden wall
and offered her his symphony in strident caterwaul.
Thomas was an alley cat, his coat a mass of scars;
but he and Millicent made love beneath a thousand stars.

Percy the Persian, wracked with rage and plagued by jealousy,
bade Millie to behave herself and guard her pedigree.
But Tom, the cross bred tabby had captured Millie's heart;
together they had pledged their troth and swore they'd never part.

So Percy laid a cunning plan; He found a long dead mouse.
He placed it in the dining room of Millie's owner's house.
Her owner, fraught and anxious, made Millicent stand guard;
She could not keep her rendezvous with Tom in her backyard.

Where Percy, sly and cunning had found a water butt;
He sat and sang like Millie until Tom came by, hot foot.
Tom leaped up on the barrel; Slipped on its mildewed rim
fell in the water cold and deep and that was the end of him.

When Millie heard the awful news, she screamed in deep despair;
jumped in the waiting water, and that was the end of her.
This was the gist of Percy's plan, that foul aristocat.
If he couldn't have her, no one could, and that was the end of that.