Chapter Seven: In Which We Take A Short Break to Talk About Important Things Like Cats and Poetry.

As Ralph the Timid was moving daringly through the stygian darkness of the cave searching for who knows what (apart from Mad Pete, who is not telling, and Ethel, who only speaks Unexpectedly Large Warblese), and Lady Antoinetta Bernadetta Clarissa Drusilla Eleanora Georgetta Henrietta Isabella Juanita Katherina Lolita Marguerita Nerissa Octavia Petunia Quintessa Roberta Suzetta Tabitha Ursula Venitia Wilhelmina Xenia Zelda of Erd, better known as Lady Ann, was deciding that being jolted along like this was most uncomfortably and maybe she would start screaming again because really Prince Rupert was being most inconsiderate, Prince Rupert was holding tightly to Lady Ann and his horse and wondering quietly to himself how the professional villians did it because he was scared he would drop her at any moment.

He tried to distract himself from this horrible possibility - the thought of such a beautiful creature as Lady Ann lying crumbled in the road with hoofprints running over her was too terrible for him to bear - by thinking happy thoughts about kittens. He tried to compose a poem in his head, one about kittens. He would share it with Lady Ann when he was finished abducting her, and maybe she wouldn't be too angry.

This brings up two important points. The first is about the nature of cats. The cat produces an interesting double standard. They present both some of the most domesticated creatures, and some of the least. Many cats are so incredibly domesticated that they have begun domesticating animals in their turn. Some have even managed to train their owners to not only feed them as soon as they stand by the great white box in the kitchen and say something exclamatory, but also to clean up after them and to get up in the middle of the night to open doors for them. Small wonder then that cats feel they are omnipotent and may sleep where they want and scratch where they want, and pretend not to hear when they are being called. But that is the domestic cats.

In the wild, naturally enough, cats are far from domestic. Their claws and teeth which they use so playfully in the home become weapons, and they are powerful killing machines, capable of great leaps and feats of physical strength. Is it any surprise that we have only domesticated the little ones? Is it now so surprising that Prince Rupert was thinking fondly of kittens? He, after all, had no great white box in his kitchen to tempt them with, the refrigerator (or indeed the telephone, gas cooking or electricity) having not yet reached Ablet.

But perhaps in saying this, Prince Rupert is being wronged. Perhaps he was thinking more of the universal response to the small and fluffy, rather than the villianous response of joy in bloodstained toothy grins. Time will tell.

The second point this raises is about poetry. Poetry, like cats, is a double edged sword. Grammarians may argue that the sentence should read, "Poems, like cats, are double edged swords", but then grammarians really have very little to do with poetry, except perhaps through presenting rules for poets to subvert, or through inventing rules so poets can make their poems make sense when normal every day rules of grammar would make the readers head explode. (As in the Abletian epic poem of the hero Odyracles and his journey home from the shops :
His birth the year of which singing shall not occur/ It should not have had it happen had it not had it happen/ Alas Odyracles...a poem more known for its antiquity than any one being able to understand its contents).

But this is a digression. Poetry is a double edged sword because, on the one hand, it has been domesticated. It is sung to children to put them to sleep. It is sung to children to make them play games. It is written in love letters. It is tied down in books in words. It is studied in universities. It is tame and controlled. But, much like the cats, it also runs wild. It has big teeth, and leaps without warning. It disguises itself in ordinary phrases and then scrambles itself out, occasionally embarrassingly (as when the nice young man in the general store suddenly discovers he is greeting his customers with "Good morning ladies, how do you do? It's such a lovely day, what can I do for you?" and then cannot stop talking in rhyme.). It is insidious, and is as much the weapon of evil doers as the lifeblood of lovers and the collective memory of historical events. Poetry, untamed, as is to be feared as the tiger.

It is important to remember both these things, as they will probably be important later in the story.

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