I’m pretty sure William Butler Yeats didn’t have Mito in mind when he wrote this fantastic poem, partly because Mito has been alive for four years and Yeats has been dead for eighty-eight. Also, Mito is, for safety reasons, an indoor cat and unfortunately has no feline friends to speak of other than possibly the ghost of Emily. Still, reading the poem made me think of our newest cat-a-loger, and I like to imagine that when alone at night in the Library, Mito has some MYSTICal, slyly selenian fun!
by William Butler Yeats
The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet.
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
Mito the Library Cat 