CAT POEMS

“My cat can’t read, can’t read a word. / (To think he could would be absurd.) / Yet every time I read a book, / he scrambles up to take a look.” Winning high marks for child appeal, this collection pairs two dozen rollicking rhymed tributes to the behavior and vagaries of cats with simple, vivacious cartoon portraits of chubby, skinny, ragged, neatly groomed, lazy, wild, wide-eyed, heavy-lidded, young, old and ageless felines, mostly in domestic settings. Some, like “Finicky Felicia” or “Mixed-Up Max,” are named, while others are anonymous—but all offer entertainment to their humans, companionship and comfort in times of stress: “She rubs her head against my leg, / and I’m no longer sad— / for suddenly my awful day / is really not so bad.” Crawley may not dig so deeply into the feline psyche, and his own, as Cynthia Rylant does in Boris (see below), but rare is the young reader who won’t respond to the deep affection he conveys, affirmed by the closing observation that stroking 20-year-old Tandy “still brings back the joy— / when she was a kitten and I was a boy.” (Poetry. 6-9)