The cats of Adamjji woods
Slinking across the rooves at night,
Pouncing at night-jars in mid-flight,
Scattering rubbish from bins in the street,
They emerge, rangy and scared, from forest depths, deep
These are the cats of the Adamajji woods,
And they terrorise the neighbourhood,
Feral cats of enormous size roam the streets with glowing eyes.
"They kill our wildlife," conservationists say,
"They'll be breeding like rabbits if they have their way",
"They're a menace on me property, bloody oath," one farmer did say.
"Killed one of me chooks just the other day."
The farmer announced, in the pub late one day,
That the cats from the woods were going to pay,
Gun by his side, he drove on his way,
Till the headlights of the ute picked up his prey,
He leapt from the doorway, .22 in hand,
The cat tried to escape but was born to be damned.
As the hero in overalls bent over his kill,
He noticed a marking familiar to him.
"Could this be the cute kitten I bought for baby last year,
That fell pregnant in the spring, that I dumped somewhere near?"
But this matter he put to the back of his mind, it was history,
He returned home to his friends, triumphant in victory,
He'll buy yet another cute kitten one day,
But as usual, man will be the last to pay.
Chris Paige, year 12, Strathmore VIC
This poem comes from the collection Voices for the Animals - A Collection of Stories and Poems by Australian School Students .
Animal Liberation SA holds the copyright to this work. Permission is granted to teachers to make copies for their own students.