NATURAL BORN KILLER

For a week, he sat on my chair listening to
scratching under the front porch steps and
when it’s in the twenties outside, little animals
try to come in to eat, to get warm, to survive
the harsh January weather of a Jersey winter.

My wife says it must be a chipmunk, the ones
we always see scurrying around in summer.
But the cat and I think it’s got to be a mouse.
Early this morning, I’m up before everyone else
and I hear that old cat running around the house
banging into furniture, batting at the curtains,
scampering in short bursts through the kitchen.

And when I decide to check it out, I find him
sitting calmly, staring at the lifeless gray body
of the mouse, and my cat looks disappointed
that the game is over, not knowing he’s made
his first kill after nine years of never going
outside and always eating the same dry pet food.

Instincts from thousands of years of mouse catching
were summoned this morning and to think he did
it without having any claws on his front set of paws.