Hard and tender, funny and touching, whether they hunt their prey outside the house, wake him up with their claws on his face, or rummage through the pages he just typed, the cats in Charles Bukowski's poems are creatures that maintain the style, the air, and the unpretentiousness that so painfully lack in humans.

hard paradox prevails in wars, in
gardens ...
the yellow and blue night explodes in front
of me, atomic, surgical,
full of star-lit
devils [...]
"The Cat"