Raising the Tone of this Blog

Hello. Her Royal Highness here. Like the rest of you, I can't help but notice that the tone of this blog has degenerated lately into superficial fluff, adolescent sexual fantasies about Colin Firth and descriptions of gastrointestinal distress. Therefore, I am intervening in order to post something with more literary merit -- an extract from the greatest medieval poem ever written, Beocat. You're welcome.

Brave Beocat, brood-kit of Ecgthmeow,

Hearth-pet of Hrothgar in whose high halls

He mauled without mercy many fat mice,

Night did not find napping nor snack-feasting.

The wary war-cat, whiskered paw-wielder,

Bearer of the burnished neck-belt gold-braided collar band,

Feller of fleas fatal, too to ticks,

The work of wonder-smiths, woven with witches' charms,

Sat upon the throne-seat his ears like sword-points

Upraised, sharp-tipped, listening for peril-sounds,

When he heard from the moor-hill howls of the hell-hound,

Gruesome hunger-grunts of Grendel's Great Dane,

Deadly doom-mutt, dread demon-dog.

Then boasted Beocat, noble battle-kitten,

Bane of barrow-bunnies, bold seeker of nest-booty:

"If hand of man unhasped the heavy hall-door

And freed me to frolic forth to fight the fang-bearing fiend,

I would lay the whelpling low with lethal claw-blows;

Fur would fly and the foe would taste death-food.

But resounding snooze-noise, stern slumber-thunder,

Nose-music of men snoring mead-hammered in the wine-hall,

Fills me with sorrow-feeling for Fate does not see fit

To send some fingered folk to lift the firm-fastened latch

That I might go grapple with the grim ghoul-pooch."

Thus spoke the mouse-shredder, hunter of hall-pests,

Short-haired Hrodent-slayer, greatest of the pussy-Geats.

[From Poetry for Cats by Henry Beard (Villard, 1994)]