never obsess over hair or clothes or pimples or whether he’s liked or how to disappear instead he spends half the morning in my lap & all night pressed up against me in my bed you might as well say our bed since I’m never in it without him, except for brief forays to eat or wrestle with the other cat or investigate a sudden noise (might be a mouse), if I stroke him in the night he slithers up to my face, opens his salmon- scented mouth & purrs with a sound like a broken water pump, kneads my neck with sharp claws, he knows he’s perfect even without algebra, a foreign language & an intramural sport, for the hour before climbing into my lap each morning he roams the house crying for everything he doesn’t have (good grades, better parents, a girl friend, spending money) I scratch his ears, offer him food, tell him just wait, someday you’ll be old like me then you’ll have something to complain about