February's Fickle Feline

I need to say a few words about cats. I don't really care for them. I have to admit that kittens are sort of adorable, but that only lasts so long. I have a cat whom I hate. I bit me all the time when I was little and used to chase me around the house. Sometimes he would rub up on my legs and purr and then sit on my foot and sink his teeth into my leg. He even used to hide under my bed, and wait until I got up in the morning to grab my feet. Cats are just fickle, frustrating little animals. You can never really tell whether they like you or not. Sometimes you think they are grateful that you feed them, water them, pay for shots and checkups and heartworm pills. Other times they pee on your stuff and mew insistently until you throw them outside. Then they stand outside and mew until you let them back in. I don't like cats. But I love this poem.

February has the sort of cynical, bitter humor that I love. It's witty, sarcastic, and altogether a very accurate portrait of the fickleness of February. February is usually the month that people start to hate winter. The cold is getting old, the snow is now all black, slushy, and forming nasty brown icicles on the back of my car. February is basically the backlash from all the fun excitement of New Years and Christmas. Sure, Valentines Day is in February, but I feel the same way about Valentines Day as I do cats. The love referred to in the poem may be an acknowledgement to Valentines Day: "But its love that does us in. Over and over again, He shoots, he scores! and famine crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing eiderdown,". Love is paradoxically compared to a hockey game. Hockey is violent, bloody, and competitive. Love is usually considered pleasant and lovely. Again, the author is implying how fickle the month of February can be.

The comparisons between hockey, February, and cats is cleverly wound around the bitterness the speaker holds feels for the whiplash of the holiday fun and the stupid decision to buy that cute kitten.