Poem Speech Thing

This is a speech I wrote for Oral Comm. class last semester...complete with poem! I hope it doesn't sound too harsh.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the leash.
That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
-Mark Twain

My kitty Jasmine is dead. Frankly, I’m sorta relieved. And that’s not to say that I hate cats; more that I find a pitying relief in her death. That sounds pretty horrible, but when you hear what her last few years were like in this poem I wrote, you’ll see that it’s probably better this way.

Oh stinky kitty;

you smell like death.

The decaying tuna in your teeth

makes me nauseous from the other side of the house.

Your eyes are lined with the crust and grime

of your oozing corneas.

The phlegm like goop

Turns black over time,

Making you look like a raccoon….except disgusting.

Mommy doesn’t want you to be put down;

She says that kitties purr when their in pain,

And that it’s all they do, when they’re really suffering.

Well, you don’t purr, stinky kitty;

I wonder if you even can any more,

Your teeth are gone,

And your vocal chords seem stuck on the “loud screech” setting.

I wonder how you can possibly be alive after all this time.

You’re at the very least 19,

And that’s if you were zero when we found you,

As a full grown cat,

With a burned off tail.

You can’t eat any more,

Not because you can’t chew,

But because your rampant

Arthritis has crippled you,

And grape sized tumors have constricted your limbs

And made it hard for you

To leave your den under the toilet.

That, unfortunately, was an honest to goodness description of my cat in its last few years of life. That part about cats purring when they are unhappy is true too, according to Petplace.com “severely ill cats also purr.”  Jasmine was a good cat, a beautiful cat. But when a cat deals with cancer it should, by all the laws nature, die. She had cancer for 4 years. She got over it; a true paragon of survival. If she could talk, she would probably have mirrored Chief Sitting Bull’s last words… “I am not going. Do with me what you like. I am not going.” As a way of representing her resolve. She never complained about her obvious pain, or the fact that replacement kittens were jumping on her. When she died, it wasn’t from cancer, no, that was to weak for this little kitty. She died of a combination of cancer, lung problems, multiple infections that would fell a lesser feline, and a completely destroyed liver. And she fought through each one of those things individually before they teamed up against her.

I’m glad Jasmine died; she deserved a break from her life. Rest In Peace.