Ode On The Death Of A Favourite Cat Drowned, Response

The title seems ironic as a cat, the predator, has drowned in a tub of goldfishes which the cat is often known to hunt. This may set an ironic theme for the poem and the title also suggests a tragic tone for the poem as this drowned cat was previously the owners favourite. In the first stanza the author sets the setting of the cat's death and provides us with a potential name for the diseased, Selima. The second stanza allows us to picture the cat with vivid imagery such as "fair round face, the snowy beard, the velvet of her paws" The poem then begins to turn more tragic and escalades to the ending paragraph where it describes the cat's watery grave in vivid detail. The poem has a rhythm scheme of AABCCB and then this repeats with different rhymes. The meter of the poem is iambic which gives the poem a specific rhythm which also contributes to the satire in the poem.