The Cat

 Don't pick up that grey cat
 Not if you value your limbs
 She'll shred them to pieces
 For committing such sins

 Resting like a sweet kitten
 She makes the softest meow
 I've never heard her purr
 Does she even know how?

 Upon closer inspection see
 She's all covered in sores
 Fights and flights and fleas
 Innocence lost, never restor'd

 I remember her as a kitten
 A little ball of soft fluff
 Lifted in her mother's mouth
 Still wears that puncture's scuff

 From a lifetime hard fought
 In her dulled eyes you see
 Anticipation of coming peace
 When no more suffered she'll be
 
 [This poem is about a real stray
 cat who lived around the apartment
 block where I live and who
 died a week after I wrote this]