In Memoriam For My Old Kitty, Shadow

Fat you were, beyond description. Jabba the Hut had nuthin' on you. From a scruffy little Brillo-pad sized stray Your appetite ballooned you To an incontinent continent of feline adiposity. A fur covered Butterball turkey With attitude You never failed to fall below expectation, Seemingly unable or unwilling To grasp the concept of the litterbox. To think we named you Shadow. Even that part of you looked heavy. You'd just sit on something that groaned beneath you, Paw draped across that vast white belly, And look at me like, "Well?" Then one day, Too chubbed to make it across the street in time, Some car bopped your noggin And knocked the life outta you. They brought you to me Unmarked yet dead; I crammed your soft bulk into a bootbox And buried you under our big tree out back. Death gave you a measure of dignity Unattainable in life, As I suppose, in the end, it does us all.