A Cat Named Sloopy (Live)

For a while the only earth that Sloopy knew was her sandbox Two rooms on 55th Street was her domain Every night she'd sit in the window among the avocado plants Waiting for me to come home My arms filled with canned liver and love We'd talk into the night then contented but missing something She, the earth she never knew, me The hills I ran while growing bent Sloopy should have been a cowboy's cat With prairies to run, not linoleum And real live catnip mice No one to depend on but herself I never told her but, in my mind I was a midnight cowboy even then Riding my imaginary horse down 42nd street Going off with strangers to live an hour-long cowboy's life But always coming home to Sloopy who loved me best For a dozen summers we lived against the world An island on an island She'd comfort me with purring I'd fatten her with smiles We grew rich on trust needing not the beach or butterflies I had a friend named Ben who painted buildings like Rouault men He went away My laughter tired Lillian after a time She found a man who only smiled But Sloopy stayed and stayed Winter, 1959, old men walk their dogs Some are walked so often That their feet leave little pink tracks in the soft gray snow Woman fur on fur Elegant and easy only slightly pure Hailing cabs to take them round the block and back Who is not a love seeker when December comes? Even children pray to Santa Claus I had my own love safe at home And yet I stayed out all one night and the next day too They must of thought me crazy screaming Sloopy Sloopy As the snow came falling down around me I was a madman to have stayed away one minute more Than the appointed hour I'd like to think a golden cowboy Snatched her from the window sill And safely saddle bagged she rode to Arizona She's stalking lizards in the cactus now perhaps, bitter, but free I'm bitter too And not a free man anymore But once was a time in New York's jungle in a tree Before I went into the world in search of other kinds of love Nobody owned me, but a cat named Sloopy Looking back Perhaps she's been the only human thing That ever gave love back to me