PoemBustopher Jones: The Cat About Town
Author / PoetT. S. Eliot
TagsBrummell, Club, Spats

Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones—
In fact, he’s remarkably fat.
He doesn’t haunt pubs—he has eight or nine clubs,
For he’s the St. James’s Street Cat!
He’s the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street
In his coat of fastidious black:
No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers
Or such an impeccable back.
In the whole of St. James’s the smartest of names is
The name of this Brummell of Cats;
And we’re all of us proud to be nodded or bowed to
By Bustopher Jones in white spats!

His visits are occasional to the Senior Educational
And it is against the rules
For any one Cat to belong both to that
And the Joint Superior Schools.

For a similar reason, when game is in season
He is found, not at Fox’s, but Blimpy’s;
He is frequently seen at the gay Stage and Screen
Which is famous for winkles and shrimps.
In the season of venison he gives his ben’son
To the Pothunter’s succulent bones;
And just before noon’s not a moment too soon
To drop in for a drink at the Drones.
When he’s seen in a hurry there’s probably curry
At the Siamese—or at the Glutton;
If he looks full of gloom then he’s lunched at the Tomb
On cabbage, rice pudding and mutton.

So, much in this way, passes Bustopher’s day-
At one club or another he’s found.
It can be no surprise that under our eyes
He has grown unmistakably round.
He’s a twenty-five pounder, or I am a bounder,
And he’s putting on weight every day:
But he’s so well preserved because he’s observed
All his life a routine, so he’ll say.
Or, to put it in rhyme: “I shall last out my time”
Is the word of this stoutest of Cats.
It must and it shall be Spring in Pall Mall
While Bustopher Jones wears white spats!

T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
26 Sep 1888 - 4 Jan 1965
Region: British, Northern Europe
Period: Modernist
Movement: Modernism
Awards: Nobel Prize in Literature, Order of Merit, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

more poems by T. S. Eliot

Poem NameTopic
Whispers Of ImmortalityDeath, Marrow, Skeleton
To Walter de la MareChildren, Jungle, Nursery
The Waste LandApril, Lilacs, Memory
The Song Of The JelliclesBall, Cats, Moon
The Rum Tum TuggerCat, Curious, Preference
The Old Gumbie Cat
The Naming Of CatsCat
The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Journey Of The Magi
The HippopotamusChurch, Flesh, True

all poems by T. S. Eliot

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