Year of the Cat - Al Stewart
- unclestylus
- 24 hours ago
- 4 min read
Way back in 1974, the brilliant and hilarious satirical songwriter and mathematician Tom Lehrer allegedly said "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize" and this is often credited as the reason why he gave up writing and performing his music.
It's been over 3 months since my last post. The general turn of international events for the even worse has had a lot to do with this. As with Lehrer, it seems futile to write about music when the destitute and innocent are facing an increasingly desperate future as new world leadership proposes to reduce aid and treat them as collateral in a giant game of real estate, stocks and shares and self-aggrandising PR. Just lately, the universal obsession with the tariff wars provoked by Donald Trump have pushed the continuing violence in Gaza and the Ukraine out of the headlines, allowing it to escalate without western leaders being called to intervene by their electorates.
The feeling of overwhelming helplessness has been growing as 2025 has progressed, a sense of depression to be in a world where at every turn the evidence points to money and property being more important than people's lives. On a personal level, there has been a glitch in my standard Wix e-mail delivery function which has discouraged me me from posting, with any attempts to rectify this met with the classic e-text replies that don't address the problem and send me round and round in maddening circles when one phone call with a human being would sort it in seconds. Which is a metaphor for the world we now live in.
One has to move from macro to micro to seek respite. In the words of Voltaire "Il faut cultiver notre jardin." Recently, a saving grace for our family was our new kitten, an extraordinary, characterful polydactyl cat, who lit up our household for four months until she was run over by a car in March. Her name was Zephy (short for Zeffirelli -) the Italian film director of the 1965 movie "Romeo and Juliet", a family favourite.
I was one of the promoters, part of Polar Promotions, who put on Al Stewart at the Union Chapel in Islington, London in 1994. "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart, which, though it's not really appropriate - it's about a holiday affair with a mysterious woman who
"....comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
like a watercolour in the rain..."
but the pervading tone of the song is gentle and sad while celebrating the memory of a time that was wonderful and beautiful. Like Zephy. I'm still hurting, hence no posts. Maybe this will help. We at Polar Promotions put Stewart on at the Union Chapel back in the nineties. He was accompanied by a tremendous guitarist, Alan White, and the duo, with Stewart over from his home in America, were superb.
Having held our two previous ancient brother and sister, nineteen-year-old cats as they were "put down" last summer, and having decided, because of this, that I didn't want another cat for a while, when Zephy burst into our household, I was pleased that my family had persuaded me otherwise. When she died, I struggled to get over it, partly because of the guilt of having not prevented her from going into the road, partly because she had made such an impact on us all. Eventually, reading the poem out to my family, seemed to exorcise the grief, so, a month after that, this is my way of getting Uncle Stylus back on the road. It's not a great poem, as it's all emotion, and a bit sloppy, but it did the trick so I hope it does the trick. A little bit of love is the best answer to most things. A poem:
Zephy
Her paws like little mittens
kitten’s mittens
polydactyl
her wispy tail, like the wet end of a thin hair plat,
recovering from an early bout of ringworm
tabby as a wildcat
and gingerback
an oxide gold instead of silver
lighting up
the family
every room, every chairback, every window, every surface, no matter how high
she sat on inside window sills and snoozed
above the radiators
in the bedroom
in the bathroom
the muslin curtain bunched up beneath her and around
as a cushion
like a skirt
in the spare room on the bed
curled neatly,
she’d climb onto our backs from the floor
gripping our clothes with her extra toes
bat a red balloon about
for hours on and off without popping
it, so gentle was her touch,
and chased any straggle of cotton, any lace
or tear of paper, moving or dormant
yet never scratched in games,
patacake catch through the banister rails
never, with grandchildren Bobbie and Joey,
especially with her special friend, Sandy,
they seemed to click, always noticing immediately
when the other was in the room,
the claws put away like fingers on an icy day
and she slept on Anna’s head, not every night,
but when the mood took her
so’s not to miss her waking up
earliest in the morning
and knuckles extended beneath the bathroom door
or her cute and tattered tail
to catch my fingers with her paw
when I stroked it
and just the way she’d look at me
devilmaycare yet
understanding, intelligent yet playful,
clumsy yet quick.
When they picked you up off the road
I held you still looking up, empty gazed,
stroked you, scratched behind your ears.
I wanted to comfort you
bring you back
say sorry, I’m sorry
I failed you, let you down.
You were too beautiful.
Four months of beauty.
What’s the opposite of joy?
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