Curiosity

 

Now ‘Curiosity’s a curious word:

    It begins and ends with a ‘Why?’

And I don’t know but you might’ve heard:

    It caused some cat to die.

And I’ll tell you how it happened, see,

    (If you’ll keep it under your hat)   

How that one word, Curiosity,

    Got the best of an old Tomcat.…

 

 

It was late one night by the light of the moon

   Whilst our Tom was out Tomcattin’.

And his poor old head was all in a swoon

   Fom all of the spittin’ and spattin’.

So he stopped to leave his scent on a tree

   And a-gather his Tomcat wits,

Then go on layin’ claim to his territ’ry

   When—there Curiosity sits!

 

Well Ftttt! and Rooow! our Tomcat spat

   In a cataballistical snit

(He could see plain as night this was some strange cat

   —And he weren’t havin’ one bit of it!)

’Cause this trespassin’ puss, this no account stray,

   Was smack in our Tom’s purrlews

And yet, in his defense, had nothin’ to say

   —Which no Tomcat could ever excuse.

 

Well, now how in the world was our Tom s’posed to get

   His back up all feline and proper

When this bounder keeps mum so’s to aid and abet

   A Tom’s umbrage to come a right cropper.

Oh, but lucky for him (our Tom, that is)

   He had nocturne-infernal cat-sight

Which allowed him to see enough insults to frizz

   Up his hair plus his dander all night.

 

Now this here one commenced with a swell-headed ‘C’

   —And wound up with a smug ‘tail’ at that;

And in Tom’s books that made Curiosity

   Nothin’ less than your typical cat.

And what’s more, in betwixt of its fat head and tail,

   Its remains was all cocky aplomb

And where Tom came from them three, without fail,

   Meant that cat was your typical tom.

 

And there he sat—in our Tom’s purrlews!—

   (Though its bounds was plum ripe with his scent)

And in any Tom’s books them was grounds to accuse

   Any cat he was impurrtinent.

So our Tom closed on in with the cat’s meow march

   With its catalogue feline flair:

His best sideways affront, his back in an arch,

   Every hair stuck  up high in the air.

 

—And the glare, oh, yes, the mean tomcattin’ glare,

   And the hair-raising catamount howl;

Yes, it’s the only way to sneak up, fair and square,

   On a feline, fair weather or foul.

“I’ll know his business right quick,” thought our Tom

   —I’ll be right! in his face, by and by

And won’t I just send him where he’s coming from

   —Won’t I make his mangy fur fly!”

 

Closer, now closer stole forward our Tom

   (Was there ever a stolethier cat?)

Yet the closer he got the more silent and calm

   That fool Curiosity sat.

“Now wait a dang minute,” our Tom thought hisself,

   “This here feline’s none too bonefied,

’Cause, I swear, some moonlightin’ felineous elf

   Has built this here cat—on the side!

 

“Why, I’m lookin’ him now, right smack in his flanks

   —And there’s things here that just don’t belong:

I’ll be danged if this cat ain’t the victim of pranks:

   Why, he’s plain put together—all wrong!

Either that, I swear—if I’m wrong, strike me dead!—

   He’s not sportin’ an ounce of cat pride,

’Cause in spite that he’s got him a really swelled head,

   He’s comportin’ his face—on his side!”

 

So he sidled up to Curiosity’s face

    —And he looked him plum square in the ‘i’s

(And I guess ’cause the two was both lower case

    He weren’t too put off by their size).

“Now what kind of a cat has an ‘o’ for its nose

   —With an ‘s’ attached—so’s he can sniff?

Which ‘os’ makes a counter-fit, counter-cat pose,

   And puts my proper nose in a tiff.

 

But what really got Tom’s feline goat was this…‘cat’

    Had that city-bred letter-box smell;

So’s he came to believin’, did Tom, for all that,

    He was ’neath Curiosity’s ‘spell.’

He was tempted to high-tail it on out o’ there

    And leave Curiosity—flat;

But some questions was still hangin’ up in the air

    And, confound it …our Tom was a cat:

 

“Why don’t this here blamed Curiosity speak?

    Why don’t his cold face even move?

Why must he go put an old Tom in a pique

    Who’s got no more—not nothin’—to prove?”

So he backed hisself off three paces, or four,

    And he sat hisself down on the ground.

And he scratched his head in three places, or more,

    But each left him just as dumfound.

 

“Well, now I’ll be bedanged!” he said puzzledly,

   As he squinted, then closed, one eye.

“Now how can a cat that begins with a ‘C’

    In additions commence with a ‘Why?’

Now I reckon I’ve seen every pedibreed cat

   —And those I ain’t seen of I’ve heard.

Could it be this here purrless, parlous chat

   Is that rare, chatless breed called a ‘wurd’?”

 

So he looked this wurd up, from bottom to crown

    (Like he’d look at a plump canary),

But nary once looked (to his great renown)

    This wurd up in a dictionary.

Pooh! when it comes to diction there’s nary a cat

    That’ll stick his proud nose in a book;

Why, your av’rage Tom—you’d be lucky at that—

    If he gave its blamed cover a look.

 

No, your av’rage Tom wouldn’t never once think

    To stoop so blamed liter’lly low.

Why, I reckon he’d just as soon jump in and swim

     ’Round a tubful of melt ice and snow!

And speakin’ of ’round, just like a true cat,

   Our Tom went to roundin’ right there:

He went ’round—and found—Curiosity…flat!

   So’s it bristled his each feline hair.

 

Well, if he circum-described that wurd-cat once

    He walked ’round it a thousand more;

And each left him feeling no less of a dunce

     Than the round of that weird cat before.

And each time he did Curiosity

    Showed nary a feline surprise;

But sat still and watched (cataleptically)

    With his two little dotted ‘i’s.

 

Well, you’d’ve thought the face of our old Tomcat

     Had a lookin’ glass now in its place,

’Cause, you see, Curiosity—plain, wide, and flat—

    Was written all over his face!

And what you could read all over that puss,

   In the face of our old Tomcat,

Was “Now how can a puss be such a danged wuss

   As to be so infernally flat?

 

“How could any flat cat, with a flat meow,

   Not be hopelessly out of tune?

And how could a cat so flat—tell me how!—

   Ever yowl such a face to the moon?

It’s a curiosity, that’s for sure,

   No conunderum I know’s outshone it;

It just gets curious, sir, and curious, sir,

   The more this old Tom dwells upon it.”

 

Well, he minded it so much, our Tom, that it put,

   All his cat dander in such a flap,

That he mistook his worst for his best pussyfoot

   —And plum missed his midnight catnap!

So he laid his old Tomcattin’ body down so’s

   In the wink of an eye he could see,

If so much as a muscle disturbed his repose,

   And made move Curiosity.…

 

 

Now I s’pose forty winks or a little shut-eye

   Might serve a man for his nightcap,

But it don’t hold no shakes for to revitalfy

   As does but your shortest catnap.

Well, our Tom awoke in the blink of an eye,

   And it served him as well and as deep

As if a man in his like by and by

   Had sawed off ten hours of sleep.

 

And there…in the moonlight, as when he lay down

   To catch his cat-tonical ‘z,’

Our Tom saw that brazenly improper noun,

   Namely: blamed Curiosity.

Then his yellow cat’s eyes lit up—round as all that—

    “Oh,  I SEE!”—he was moved to expound 

And what he said next (well, at least for a cat)

    Was really quite feline profound:

 

“Oh, I  C… u—r—iosity,

    Well, now, I’m an old Tomcat.

Yes, the pun is an atrocity

   —But I’ve said it, by gum,  and that’s that!

And now I know who, where—and just what you are

    You can hang me if I’ve got a doubt:

It may kill me but I’ll be dadblamed, near and far,

   If I don’t, ’fore I die, parse you out.”

 

So he looked Curiosity square in the ‘i’s

   So’s to let him know he’d darn soon teach

His Impurrt’nence a lesson by breaking him down

   Into all his fool non-parts of speech.

 But as much as each trick in the cat-book he tried 

   Which was meant to bring things to foreclosure,

That fool Curiosity kept all his pride

   —And each danged bit of feline composure!                                  

 

“He just sits there, still, in his cold letter box

   —And all to my parsin’ defeat;

Just as if he knows, without that he talks,

   That he’s sat in the catwurd seat.”

And that vexed our Tom so’s he plum didn’t know

   Quite where to head in at next;

Much as if his status weren’t quite up to quo

   —And some moonlightin’ curse had him hexed!

 

“Why can’t I get so much as one measly claw

   Beneath Curiosity’s skin?

It’s as if there was some kind of infernal law

   Keepin’ his parts from unparsellin’!”

Beside hisself now, our Tom would’ve cursed

   His most colorful scurrility

(Oh, he would’ve, he swore, but the truth is he durst

   Not besides such sublime company).

 

So, as much as it galled him he choked down his bile,

   And kept the whole works ’neath his choler;

Bottled up his opinin’s inside all the while

   Though out loud they was  itchin’ to holler.

Oh, and it cost our Tom dear—and he knew it, did Tom,

   Keepin’ all them cat ferments inside:

Wearin’ down self-respect, burnin’ up his aplomb

   And eatin’ huge holes in his pride.

 

Yet, Tom kept right on in his stubborn travail,

   Tryin’ to parse Curiosity out:

From the ‘Why?’ of his swelled head to that of his tail

   —And just what? that fool cat was about.

And he’d’ve done it, too, but what threw Tom askew 

   Was them two dotted ‘i’s—in his side!

Well, that plum beat all!—what else could he do?

   Our Tom simply curled up…and died.

 

 

It’s been many a year since our Tom up and tried

   To parse out that cat short of arson;

And they say he might damned well have saved his fool hide

   —If he’d only just called in a parson.

No, a preacher, a pastor, not even a priest

   Could have said to Tom “Well, there you are son.”

This hindsight is clear: he’d not now be deceased

   If our Tom had but called in a parson.

 

Well, any fool who knows the first thing about cats

   Knows they’s stubborner than twenty mules;

And the second most thing you learn about cats

   Is the first is all one of its rules.

Why, before a cat would swallow its pride

   And call someone else in on the case,

It might hope the spare eight of its lives up and died

   So’s but one had to live in disgrace.

  

Yet they say Curiosity plum killed that cat

   Just by fixin’ our Tom with two ‘i’s,

Well, that’s dead wrong, ’cause you and I both know that

   He fixed our Tom with his two ‘why?’s

 —And fixed him right good, as we’ve both plainly seen,

   Curiosity did, and no tricks:

It was all that fool parsin’ what lay in between

   That wound our Tom up in his fix.

 

So he sits, Curiosity does, still, and stares

    With his two little dotted ‘i’s

As one cat after another dares

    To parse him out…and dies.

And our Tom might’ve knowed, too, he’d get hisself killed

   Tryin’ to parse Curiosity flat:

Shucks, the country was too long and too deep instilled:

   —He just weren’t a ‘sity’-bred cat.

 

Yet, if Curiosity kills a cat

   (They say this as though it’s a fact),

Satisfaction’s proverbally bound, tit for tat,

   To bring that dead cat right on back.

Well, now, if Satisfaction could do it (he cain’t

   —And I guess we got good proof of that!)  

Why, I reckon he’d choose to bring back the first saint

   ’Fore he would an old Tomcat.