Cat (poem)

Cat is a poem written by Sam Gamgee and recorded in the Red Book of Westmarch, although at most he only touched up an older piece. Hobbits appear to have been fond of comic bestiary lore, of which this is an example.

The poem contains two stanzas composed of alternating longer and shorter lines. It relies on assonance, the refrain of vowel sounds, to create internal rhyming.

Tolkien wrote the poem for his granddaughter in 1956. He apparently made use in the poem of a device found in medieval bestiaries (several such manuscripts are kept by the Bodleian Library at Oxford): the pairing of lions and pards.

It was published as the twelfth poem in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962). The poem has also been published separately in the anthology The Poetical Cat (1995).