The thing about cats

In my one brief shining moment at graduate school, I had to read about the male gaze. Or, more precisely, read about the disquisition about the male gaze. "In feminist theory, the male gaze expresses an asymmetric (unequal) power relationship, between viewer and viewed, gazer and gazed" (thank you, Wikipedia). I also had to write about what I had read, distilling others' opinions but never venturing my own. This last constraint probably accounted for the brevity of the shining moment. Outside the ivy'd towers, any woman who has walked past a construction site in the city already knows pretty much all she needs to know about that gaze.

 It would have been much more interesting to me to read and write about the feline gaze, as has poet Jean L'Heureux. L'Heureux means the happy one, and perhaps some of that happiness resulted from observing and being observed by cats, rather than reading up on the scholarly disquisition, and from writing poems rather than graduate theses. Just an opinion, folks. Here's the poem: 

The Thing About Cats

Cats hang out with witches quite a lot:

that's not it.

The thing about cats is

they're always looking at you.

Especially when you're asleep.

Some cats pretend they're not looking

until you're not looking.

They are not to be trusted.

Some cats scowl because they're wearing

imitation fur. they feel inferior.

Some other cats look at you straight on

so that you can't drink your drink

or make love

                    but keep thinking

that cat's looking at me straight on.

But all cat's do the same:

they look at you

                         and you look out

and in.

What I'm saying is

                            why are they looking?

Jean L'Heureux