They found him wandering the streets, alone
at 2:00 AM in a large city, the city’s name
is unimportant, it was large and thus dangerous
at 2:00 AM, as they all are nowadays,
and he was repeating the same thing over and over
“I never expected the tail!”
And that was all anyone could get him to say
In fact they couldn’t get him to stop saying it
The police, the doctors, everyone tried
He had no identification on him, no wallet, nothing.
Only, “I never expected the tail!”
They sedated him and he kept saying it
He said it in his sleep
He said it to everyone and to no one at all
and always as if for the first time, with the same abrupt
catch of surprise or perhaps shock in his voice
“I never expected the tail!”
It was a hopeless case, everyone said so
Until one morning a new nurse was making
the rounds with his doctor, and she said
the obvious thing, that no one else had thought to
say, “It was probably just a cat.”
That was the end, of course.
With his dying breathe he hissed,
“There’s always a cat!”