Real Men Don't Write Poems About Cats

Or at least that's what I thought until a little bundle of orange fur tumbled out of a hedgerow in Charlottesville, Virginia and onto my sidewalk path.

I didn't think too much of it then, as I was distinctly not a cat person at that point. But then he showed up on the doorstep when I checked out a nearby place to live. My future roommate said: "If you see that cat again bring him in. He can live here."

I didn't have to follow up on this directive as the cat showed up again on the doorstep the day I moved in. I guess you could say he chose me.

Since that day I've felt compelled to pen numerous verses about him, such as the eponymous "Albuquerque".