Number 93, The Pussy Cat!

The Pussy Cat!

There’s a lion on the loose near Clacton, by the sea,

Or maybe just a pussy cat, we’ll have to wait and see;

It’s hard to tell these days you know, a lion from a cat,

They seem so similar despite, their size and things like that!

The simple answer is to train a dog, to track the smell

Of lions from the zoo and then, before long we could tell

If anything remotely like a big cat has been out,

As any dog that’s worth its name will find it with his snout.

But just in case you’re getting bored, as I am with this case,

Last year I chanced to be involved in quite a similar chase:

A breathless man burst in the pub to say a snake he’d seen

And we discussed it with a beer and several in between.

He said he’d seen it cross the road, five foot long it was

He hadn’t tried to catch it yet, he said, well, just because.

And then someone reported that it still was out there now,

Would somebody please come along and rescue it somehow?

No one dared to get too close, and yet it seemed to me,

To be a python since it didn’t move too rapidly.

I picked it up; it seemed relaxed, and let me carry it,

Back to the pub to show the lads, it didn’t mind a bit.

You should have been there in the pub, to see once I was there,

The look of terror on the faces as they got their scare!

None of the men, though big and strong would even think to touch

It, even though ‘t’was plain to see it hadn’t harmed me much.

In fact it was a corn snake that had slipped out from its cage,

And being five feet long is just what happens at its age.

I guess that being orange helped to make it look quite fierce,

But this was not a snake whose fangs your skin would even pierce;

Not a deadly serpent this, recoiling for a strike,

This was just the kind of snake that anyone could like;

No venom, just a gentle squeeze, a friendly one at that,

In terms of snakes it really was a simple pussy cat!

©Stephen Saunders.

Please read number 54 again now, it is an invitation to illustrate these rhymes.

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