Summary

The poem takes place in winter, the season of eating fat-rich foods and watching hockey. In the dull gray mornings, the speaker's cat (resembling a dark sausage with trickster-like yellow eyes) jumps on the bed to verify whether the speaker is still alive. He does this by jumping on the speaker's head. If the answer is affirmative, then the cat demands to be scratched. The speaker assumes that the cat would figure out another solution to obtain the attention he desperately craves if he were to find the speaker dead one morning. The cat's breath smells like old meat and musty sofas, but he purrs in contentment.

The speaker recalls how another cat yet to be castrated has been spraying their front door. The speaker calls this a declaration of war regarding "sex and territory," which will also annihilate the human race one day...