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Margaret Kirke

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A Fair Swap?

My daughter has gone and
left me with her cat.
“Is this fair?” I ask myself.
True, the cat in many ways
resembles the daughter.
Both are beautiful, silky haired,
large eyed, greedy and
fairly domesticated.
But a cat, however affectionate,
is not a daughter.
Jacky, the daughter, brought Rosa, the cat -
named after Rosa Luxembourg
for Jacky is a good socialist -
to me, at the end of a long love affair,
when they both became
temporarily homeless.
I remember them
arriving in a black taxi:
my distraught long-haired daughter
clutching a cardboard box containing
her distraught long-haired cat.
Jacky has moved on now.
She has another home, another life,
another man.
Rosa remains,
like the abandoned child
of a dead marriage.
The cat seems more and more
to take on my daughter’s persona.
If Jacky were dead
I could say Rosa was her spirit
but this is not the case.
Perhaps though she is her child,
the once beloved child
of that long lost romance.
But a cat, however beautiful,
is not a daughter.

My husband has gone
and left me with his parrot.
This seems a very fair swap.

 

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