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 Nursery Rhyme Scavenger Hunt
Prompt No. 11. is to write an Interlocking Rubaiyat about the cat.
I wrote my poem CATS for this prompt.

Cats

CATS 

Domestic felines recline and purr,
and yawn and stretch and like to lick their fur
Do not disturb when they are fast asleep
They scratch as a spitting spatting monster.

The old alley cat in the dark will creep
along the rooftops tiles sheer and steep
Cat walker on the prowl with hip hop street cred
A hunter stalker of the darkest deep.

The panther is black, the lion well fed
(With wild roses all leopards are spotted)
The marked beauty of the bobcat mottled lynx
Rare tigers wear striped pj’s in their jungle bed.

The list of cats is a long list, I think,
There’s ocelot, cheetah, jaguar and mink,
The Pallas’s cat’s my favourite, I think,
Wait, mink is not a cat. I need a drink.

Lesley Scoble, October 2023

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The Pallas’s Cat

The Pallas’s Cat (Otocolobus manul) is a definite favourite of mine.

NOTES

The Pallas’s Cat gets its name from the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, who was the first to describe the species in 1776. 

The scientific name (Otocolobus manul) also includes manul, which originates from a local Mongolian word for the cat.

The round face and the large expressive eyes of this small wild cat made me fall in love with him the instant I saw him. He crept towards me and peeped at me from behind rocks at the Port Lympne Animal Park, Kent.

His natural habitat has a wide range, including montane grasslands and scrublands, rocky outcrops and deserts across parts of Central Asia, Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan and Russia.

They are solitary and mysterious cats who are nocturnal. It is a quiet cat, but their vocalisations include hisses, growls, meows and it is also a cat that can bark like a dog.

Conservation threats are agriculture expansion, rodent pest control and poaching for their gorgeous fur.

Hodge
Hodge was Dr Samuel Johnson’s cat who liked to eat oysters. His sculpture sits outside Samuel Johnson’s House, London. He is not mentioned in my poem, but he was a favourite domestic cat of the renowned 18th-century English writer, lexicographer, and critic, who was known for his fondness for cats.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 
In 1859, Edward Fitzgerald translated the selection of quatrains into English from Persian. 

The publication of the quatrains (the rubā iyyāt means quartets or four lines in Persian) in the 19th century led to the popularisation of this poetry form.

The Rubaiyat Poetry Form
When I was little, I was familiar with a tiny book called The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayam. Only now do I realise it is a poetry form! 

My poem is an interlocking rubaiyat variation of the traditional format and comprises four quatrains with an ababa / bbcb / ccdc / dddd rhyme pattern.

William Blake knew how to write it. Here is a quatrain (or ruba iyyat) from his famous poem, Tyger, Tyger.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

Tiger, Tiger

Here’s a brief glimpse of a baby tiger at London Zoo. (I added the sound for FX — The tigress didn’t growl at her baby).

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The Lion and the Lynx

When a lioness poses like the sphinx,
Then, is she lovelier than the lynx?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

Thank you Murisopsis and the Nursery Rhyme Scavenger Hunt for your inspiring and motivational list of prompts. 
Out of the awesome list of 13 poetry prompts, this is my second. 

The challenge is nearing completion at the end of October. This gives me two days to write eleven poems. It will not happen. Unless it’s by October 2024? 

Thank you, Muri, for this prompt — I’ve dug out a copy of the Rubaiyat Omar Kayyam and you’ve got me reading it again!

I’ve always loved the quatrains numbered 51 and 52 from the Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam. 

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Lesley lives in the City of London Square Mile. An artist, actor and sculptor (her first ceramic sculpture won the V&A inspired by… Award). Scenic artist & book illustrator, playwright, (her musical play, Rapscallion performed in inner city schools and theatre school); TV dancer; Animator and illustrator for TV production. Set up Pinecone Studios Ltd and IIMSI Ltd drama and filmmaking workshops in London – producing award-winning films made by children.