Cats Pigs -- Good Question

The Cats Who Believed They Were Pigs

by Mark Worden

They lived in the woodshed behind the house.
Born in the summer to a shy mamma tabby gone wild,
the kits began to starve when winter came.
It was a cold, stark time for hunters.
I left bits of leftover food on the front porch
when I went to work, a gesture at first
for I had no humane urge to domesticate.
They soon caught on and lurked about,
black shadows against the snow.

In time I had something I needed to prove.
Knowing just enough of Pavlov and Skinner to do the trick,
I bought catfood, savory aromatic stuff
no selfrespecting cat could leave alone.
I starved the gaunt gangling cats for three days.
Then took the food out on the porch in the cold,
sat and tantalized them until hunger won over wariness.
Soon (principle of successive approximations)
I had them eating out of my hand.
And as they fed, I'd call them fine pigs,
extol their strapping swinehood and murmur
sweet pig nothings while they savaged the liver.
I crooned, “Soooo, pigpigpig. Soooo pig pigpig.”

Later, that year when I'd bring home a shy young lady,
oh, I'd holler out, “Sooo pigpigpig, Sooo pig!”
And five cats would scamper from the shed,
they'd come running on dainty paws, tails high in the air,
and the shy young ladies I lured to my house,
the ladies who knew nothing of Pavlov and Skinner,
would ask with such becoming innocence,
“How did you do that?”