[John Whitworth]

Humph! Unfamiliar names among the regulars is bad new for us old warhorses. And so it proved. George Simmers (extra bad luck here), Chris O'Carrol, Lance Levens and Sam Gwynn were all edged out, leaving just Bill Greenwell running strongly to a win.

Ah well. This week's competition looks like one for a bumper entry.

No. 2683 After the dance
You are invited to submit a sequel to ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 26 January.

[George Simmers]

Did you know that Lear wrote his own sequel, "The Children of the Owl and the Pussycat"? Or at least, he write a draft, but never completed it. Here it is, with gaps:

Our mother was the Pussy-cat, our father was the Owl,
And so we're partly little beasts and partly little fowl,
The brothers of our family have feathers and they hoot,
While all the sisters dress in fur and have long tails to boot.
We all believe that little mice,
For food are singularly nice.
Our mother died long years ago. She was a lovely cat
Her tail was 5 feet long, and grey with stripes, but what of that?
In Sila forest on the East of fair Calabria's shore
She tumbled from a lofty tree -- none ever saw her more.
Our owly father long was ill from sorrow and surprise,
But with the feathers of his tail he wiped his weeping eyes.
And in the hollow of a tree in Sila's inmost maze
We made a happy home and there we pass our obvious days.

From Reggian Cosenza many owls about us flit
And bring us worldly news for which we do not care a bit.
We watch the sun each morning rise, beyond Tarento's strait;
We go out ------------------ before it gets too late;
And when the evening shades begin to lengthen from the trees
------------------ as sure as bees is bees.
We wander up and down the shore ------------------
Or tumble over head and heels, but never, never more
Can see the far Gromboolian plains ---------------------
Or weep as we could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene:
This is the way our father moans -- he is so very green.

Our father still preserves his voice, and when he sees a star
He often sings ------------ to that original guitar.
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
The pot in which our parents took the honey in their boat,
But all the money has been spent, beside the £5 note.
The owls who come and bring us news are often ------
Because we take no interest in poltix of the day.)

We'll have a job to do better than that, I think.

[Roger Slater]

THE SEQUEL

The children of the Pussy-Cat whose father was an Owl
Combined meows and hoots into an eery hybrid howl,
And all the folks who knew them seemed in one thing to concur:
Their skin was neither feathery, nor made of feline fur.
They flew, but not reliably. They'd plummet to the street,
Yet they were never hurt because they landed on their feet.
Though every now and then reporters asked them for a quote,
The Pussy-Owls led quiet lives with deeds of little note.

Until one day a Pussy-Owl, the oldest of the brood,
Said, "I recall a day when dad majestically hoo-hooed
And told me, 'It's my dream that all my children marry fish.'"
And so he went right out that day to grant his daddy's wish.
He found a tender mackerel, and knew with just one look
That she would always be his love. He baited up his hook.
She bit, and they had children who would learn not to disparage
The family tradition known as species intermarriage.

[John Whitworth]

Yes we will, George, most obviously if we try, as I have tried, to imitate Lear's particular melancholy. I've done my best but it's a long way short of the master.

The Owl and the Pussy Cat Revisited

They lived together did fur and feather
As happy as happy could be,
With crabs and seals and electric eels
In a house by the sounding sea.

But the pussy cat grew old and fat
And in course of time she died,
Then the owl was left alone bereft
To mourn by the sad seaside.

So away he flew through the endless blue,
At a slow and steady pace,
Past the planet Mars and the seven stars
To the caverns of outer space,

And he sang a song as he flapped along
From a heart that was tried and true.
To-whit to-whit was the style of it,
To-woo to-woo to-woo.

[Roger Slater]

The moon, though, was waning, and it started raining,
The dance, it was washed to the sea,
So they hurried inside, where they lived till Owl died,
Then Pussy climbed up in a tree.

Her friends from the town cried "Pussy, come down!"
But she acted like she hadn't heard.
She wailed out her grief, blew her nose with a leaf,
And dreamed of her nocturnal bird.

At night she meowed, and the sound was so loud
That children asleep in their beds
Heard them as screams in the nightmarish dreams
That haunted their innocent heads.

But something then flew past the tree -- Pussy knew
It was Owl, or his ghost, saying "Come!
Go get the spoon and we'll dance 'neath the moon,"
And the screams in the tree-top fell dumb.

[George Simmers]

I'm afraid this one lowers the tone somewhat:

The Owl and the Pussycat went to see
A counsellor from Relate.
“I’d be better off dead,” the Pussycat said,
“Than yoked to so owlish a mate.”

“When I took you to wife,” says the Owl, “I thought life
Would be one sweet rhapsodical dance.”
Says the Cat, looking dreamy, “Wild sex, hot and steamy,
Was what I was after. Fat chance.”

“What you did with that honey,” says Owl, “wasn’t funny;
It clogged all my feathers like tar.”
“I got tired,” Pussy sniffs, “of repetitive riffs
On a notably small guitar.”

The counsellor (who, by the way, was a gnu)
Broke in, moved to the point of a tear.
“Stop this nonsense,” she fumed, “or your marriage is doomed.
And that would upset Mr. Lear.”

[Ann Drysdale]

One more tweak to that antepenultimate line and you're there. I think this is exactly the right tone!

[Jerome Betts]

I agree with Anne. I don't want to put the mockers on this by saying it's a certain winner (oh yes I do!) but it surely is. Maybe something like 'Found this more than she wanted to hear' for that antepenultimate?

[George Simmers]

Thanks, Anne and Jerome. You're right.

I've provisionally adapted the last stanza to the following, but may well tweak again later.

The counsellor (who, by the way, was a gnu)
Found their bickering painful to hear.
“Stop this nonsense,” she fumed, “or your marriage is doomed,
And that would upset Mr. Lear.”

[Ann Drysdale]

Now you're cooking on gas!