February 
    Winter. Time to eat fat
    and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
    a black fur sausage with yellow
    Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
    to get onto my head. It's his
    way of telling whether or not I'm dead.
    If I'm not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
    He'll think of something. He settles
    on my chest, breathing his breath
    of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
    purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
    not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
    declaring war. It's all about sex and territory,
    which are what will finish us off
    in the long run. Some cat owners around here
    should snip a few testicles. If we wise
    hominids were sensible, we'd do that too,
    or eat our young, like sharks.
    But it's love that does us in. Over and over
    Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
    crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
    eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
    thirty below, and the pollution pours
    out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
    February, month of despair,
    with a skewered heart in the centre.
    I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
    with a splash of vinegar.
    Cat, enough of your greedy whining
    and your small pink bumhole.
    Off my face! You're the life principle,
    more or less, so get going
    on a little optimism around here.
    Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

                          Margaret Atwood