The Ballad of the Headless Bunny

‘twas a Sunday morning, the first of May
A fine and fragrant playful day
I put on my bike shorts, prepared for a ride
Opened the garage door and went outside.

There I stepped down on what looked like a mouse
Bloody and lifeless outside of our house.
I took bag in hand and prepared to grab it
When I realized the thing was the head of a rabbit!

I stepped inside, to speak with Rocco
Our younger male cat, and sort of a jocko.
I said “Thanks for the present you left on the steps.”
“Just earning,” he said, “my keep as your pet.”

“I appreciate all the hunting you do,”
I said as I scraped the gore off of my shoe,
“But you should know, if you haven't been told
That beheading bunnies is really quite cold.”

“It's nature,” Roc said, with a cynical glare.
“He may have been cute, but he's just a March hare
Who wore out his welcome, so I let him have it.
That's the cause of the death of this beheaded rabbit.”

Up ambled Okie, elder cat statesman.
He'd spent the night downstairs in the basement.
His hunting days over, he's now much the wiser.
He only chews cat food on his long incisors.

“Kid, you blew it,” he said as he walked up,
“When you rub out a rabbit, you don't want to get talked up.
Silent but deadly, discreet terminations
Are the type that are favored by criminal nations.”

The younger buck stood as if stunned by a shot.
“You mean you don't celebrate, a lot or a jot?”
“No way,” said his brother, who's now in his dotage.
“You don't want to be covered by cat crime repotage.”

“The tabloids are vicious, the front page pics grisly,
The stories they offer are hot and quite sizzly.
When word gets round you're big cat on the block
Every tom in the hood wants to give you a knock.”

So Rocco, a feline who learns as he goes,
Decided he'd rather be writ up in prose.
No Song of Rocco, for this black and white moppet
He ordered the author of this poem to stop it.

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”