by Ted Sherman

Created on: July 07, 2008   Last Updated: July 10, 2008

Just seeing the title of "The Owl and the Pussycat" brings back wonderfully happy memories of reading to my kids at bedtime. It was with its sing-song rhythms that they first learned to read, as they laughed, chanted and sounded out the simple words with me. Author Edward Lear and many literary experts have called it a nonsense poem. They classify it along with the wonderfully convoluted wordplay of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland". However, if it was nonsense, it was a delightful nonsense when I saw my four-year-olds reading competently long before they started first grade.

The poem has been a family tradition for three decades, and whenever we gather for a holiday or other happy event, the youngest reader there will do the honors with "The Owl and the Pussycat." In addition, we older members always repeat a story related to the poem. Maybe it is contrived or it could have been absolute reality, but we have a long treasured family experience that happened ... or should have happened ... many years ago that never fails to help us upgrade the Edward Lear poem from silly words to a wonderfully lasting memory.

One morning, our cat, Mems, brought in a live baby owl. The situation was unusual, but not necessarily just because it was an owl. Our hunter feline's frequent gifts to his human family were always dead before he lay the little corpses of mice, moles, squirrels and various bird species, all lined up in a neat row on our kitchen floor.

It is doubtful that our instinctive predator Mems was in a PETA mood to spare the little critter's life. Maybe those big, soulful owl eyes got to him, or like a typical cat, he was just saving his prey to bat it around and torture it to death later.

Our kids were age three and six at the time, and they were fascinated with the baby bird. A pygmy owl, it was tiny, blinking and shaking with fright, but they believed Mems had presented them with a very special gift, a new pet. We didn't have the heart to tell them that the baby owl, probably fallen from a nest, and now smelling of cat spit, would never be accepted again by its mother. The fact that it was sure to die within a couple of hours didn't occur to them.

The kids made a little nest of rags in a shoebox, and our son went digging in the yard for worms. We minced pureed worms with honey and fed the baby with an eye dropper. The owl accepted the food and the kids went happily up to bed with their gift, followed by a somewhat puzzled Mems. Our practical cat had intended

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