And in whatever houses a cat has died by a natural death, all those who dwell in this house shave their eyebrows only, but those in whose houses a dog has died shave their whole body and also their head.  The cats when they are dead are carried away to sacred buildings in the City of Bubastis, where after being embalmed they are buried - Herodotus

 

Somehow, we’ve acquired a statuette of Bast,

Egyptian cat-goddess, at some point in the past

This bric-a-brac that lumbers

And infests our house produced her;

A manifestation, bronze, she sits in the hearth

Uneasy alongside the firedogs

With a bland, impersonal gaze

 

Somehow, and also in the past, of course

We acquired four real cats,

Real cats, for real, for better or for worse

Real cats familiar with witches’ curse

And invocations;

For midnight duvet invasions,

For yowling for food and

For sleeping curled up in a tight

Yin-yang ball, by the fire,

On a bed in the hearth.

 

The Egyptians, so I’ve heard

Would have worshipped them;

And when the owner died, he too went in

The same tomb, mummified,

In the Temple at Per-Bast

And why not? Look in any English church

The chainmail knights’ feet, pointing forever

Towards Jerusalem, are resting on a bratchet.

 

Worshipped in Egypt, cats; gods of the house

Foe of the mouse, the rat the snake

Guardians of grain in times of plague, ague and ache,

Allowed to eat from the plates of humans,

Milk to drink, (that much, at least was true of ours,

Sometimes, before we’d finished…) and I think

Maybe we also worshipped them, but

In our own inadequate way

 

Bast was their guardian, throughout,

The Lady of Cats - when the last one ailed

We lit incense,  smoke from the joss stick

Hung round Bast’s statuette, veiled her,

As we prayed to every deity we knew,

But this time the Nile refused to flood,

There were no miracles in the bulrushes, and

The Red Sea stayed unparted, all spells failed.

 

So go, and bring me Cassia and Cinnamon,

Juniper Berries, Oil of Cedar, Myrrh and Henna,

Raise her a garden-cairn, a pyramid;

Bring me Nile-water to wash me and console me

Bring me incense of Dittany of Crete,

And soap that I may shave my eyebrows off,

 

While I’ll still miss her whiskered kiss, old puss,

Purring companionship, look down to find my ink

Blurred by the tears that rain on the papyrus

My grief wrought with this metaphor of Bast

Ringing on the dull anvil of my brain