BARNABY GOES TO HEAVEN

BARNABY GOES TO HEAVEN
by S L Smith

Why is it mom can’t see me as I wind round her ankles?

She doesn’t pay me attention,
Great Bast how that rankles!
And when I try to exercise my needle-pointed claws,
It doesn’t make an impact on the drapes .
.. or couch .
.. or doors.
Well something’s very wrong here and I haven’t worked it out,
She doesn’t seem to hear me though I yowl and stomp and shout,
And mom cleared away the foodbowl as if I wasn’t there,
Okay,
I don’t feel hungry,
but it still seems so unfair!
What’s this?
She’s tidying my cat bed,
she’s put it out of sight,
Something’s going on here and it surely isn’t right,
And now my poor mom’s crying like her heart will surely break,
What is going on here?
Let me know,
for goodness sake!
She left the room ignoring me,
so to the door I raced,
But as though she couldn’t see me,
she just slammed it in my face,
Well I tried to dig my claws in,
came to a skidding stop,
I braced myself for impact and .
.. right through the wood I popped!
Ah,
things are making sense now and I think I get the picture,
It just happened so suddenly I didn’t have it figured,
So if you will excuse me,
mom,
I must be moving on,
But I’ll peek at you from heaven and we’ll meet again ere long.
…. Oops! I’ll have to add a postscript,
cos I’d hate you to not know,
Heaven’s quite a fun place (once you’ve worked out it’s time to go!),
But I really miss my cuddles and my cans of Uncle Frisk,
So mom,
when you come to join me,
can you fetch me up a dish?

* He lived his whole life in confusion and probably made a mess of passing over,
then tackled the afterlife with a similarly scatterbrained attitude.
If he comes back on visits as a ghost,
he’ll be the sort who can’t quite work out how to walk through walls.