Ode to a Nameless Cat by Celestine Trinidad

Ode to a Nameless Cat
by Celestine Trinidad

We thought it best not to give him a name,
So little,
So vulnerable.
Death could easily take him away,
Invisible to a distracted driver,
Victim to a fatal disease.
We thought it best not to love him,
not yet.
Not when we lost so many little ones before.

But it was inevitable.
He was never afraid,
not of us.
He would lick our calloused hands,
Snuggle against our bone-weary feet,
Rest his little head on our laps,
a silent solace.

We loved him,
Yet still we did not name him.

But it was inevitable.
One day, death, with its icy hands,
Wrenched him away from our warmth
into its frozen embrace.
And we have no name to remember him by.

Yet we mourn for the little orange kitten
we never thought to name,
Yet still
loved.


Celestine Trinidad is an intern of Medicine from the Philippines, but she still tries to read and write as much as she can in her (now unfortunately very little) free time. Much to her surprise, she won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her short story for children “The Storyteller and the Giant”. Her blog can be found here.