I Could Not Help But Hear It Poem by Francis Duggan

I could not help but hear it as I walked nearby
The feral cat in the scrub uttered a painful cry
As I approached where it was hiding it staggered away
Leaving lots of it's blood behind on the ground where it lay.

Of the praises of feral cats one cannot sing
But what sort of a person could do such a thing
To shoot at it and wound it and then walk away?
To karma this person has a huge price to pay.

On birds and small endangered species cats are known to prey
But to kill to survive is their natural way
They cannot differentiate between a common species and a rare bird of song
And killing for survival one cannot say is wrong.

An innocent creature far more so than you or I
The poor feral cat of a gunshot wound he will die
A slow death in agony and awful pain
And the bad memory of such cruelty by one of my own kind with me will remain.