Ostensibly about a specific cat, this book has higher hopes-that all cat lovers, and pet owners, will find here some of their own love for these remarkable beings that inherit our homes and our hearts. I have had a life full of dogs and cats, but was always working or going to school, and so I only experienced limited periods of time with my pets. This book shows what happened after I retired, adopted an old cat, and could observe him and fully engage with him around the clock. The time was, as you see, lovingly repaid and cherished. Having sat on my lap or next to me in his desk bed during much of the writing of these poems, Ramen has given them his approval. If you haven't yet, make room in your heart: adopt a pet. John Delaney retired after 35 years in the Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections of Princeton University Library, where he was head of manuscripts processing and then, for his last 15 years, curator of historic maps. He has written a number of works on cartography, including Strait Through: Magellan to Cook and the Pacific, First X, Then Y, Now Z: An Introduction to Landmark Thematic Maps, and Nova Caesarea: A Cartographic Record of the Garden State, 1666-1888. These have extensive website versions. He has written poems for most of his life, and, in the 1970s, he attended the Writing Program of Syracuse University, where his mentors were poets W. D. Snodgrass and Philip Booth. No doubt, in subtle ways, they have bookended his approach to poems. His poetic publications include Waypoints (2017), a collection of place poems, Twenty Questions (2019), a chapbook, Delicate Arch (2022), poems and photographs of national parks and monuments, Galápagos (2023), a collaborative work of his son Andrew's photographs and his poems, Nile (2024), poems and photographs about Egypt, and Filing Order: Sonnets (2025). He lives in Port Townsend, WA.