Boss Cat and the Botticelli Nude

"Suddenly you remember an old Chinese tale in which cats once ran the world until they decided it was too much bother. That's when you stepped in, another story. Say you get up now and go back to work" Dian Duchin Reed I once had a Lilac Point Siamese of royal lineage who entered our commoner family as a small ball of silky fur, home-schooled in the basement until he discovered the joys of the climb. In time, he grew beautiful, sleek, and mischievous, loved the warmth of sunshine and stovetop, delighted in rearranging the coffee table flowers in front of my egg yolk yellow plastic couch, (it WAS the seventies, after all). One shout, and he was out, knowing the rules of the house, knowing too, noblesse oblige, that pardon followed hard on the paws of beauty, intelligence, and a feline sense of humor. At bath time, cats and water at polar ends of the tub, I was a Botticelli nude, awash in suds, cat at breast, his blue eyes black with dread, and though love prevailed between the species, when toweled dry, cat fled, taking his righteous, royal rage to simmer beneath the bed. We named him "Charlie Chan" for the serial father of forties' movie fame, Charlie when in grace, C Chan, shouted out when in the cathouse with his mom, Super Cat by any name. Daily reveille was his, crouching bedside each dawn, minutes to spare by cat time until the alarm clock triggered a leap into our bed, and a practiced tread over recalcitrant bodies. If, as it is said, animals have no sense of future tense, then Chan, a blessed Buddha of the interminable now, could not foresee "NO pets" unwelcomed in our path. Into the arms of another woman who pledged to love him, I placed one confused and frightened cat. Now years past, absence making missing stronger, I cannot part with the broken heart I ask this poem to mend.