Just as your toes are warming up beneath
the covers, the wife whispers “Darling,
America wants to come in out of the cold,”
so you grumble through the frigid kitchen
to the door, and there sits this orange cat
looking all matted and filthy from
who-knows-what rubbish it’s been poking in,
and when you reach for a towel it blinks
twice and darts off again into the darkness.