you need your cat

I must have been living under a rock all these years. It completely escaped me that Ted Hughes (Poet Laureate of England; 1930-1998) wrote a number of cat poems. They are difficult to find online, but the bits I've found are sensible, sympathetic, likeable. I really didn't expect that, not from someone with such an amount of tragedy in his life (and Sylvia Plath - how tiresome to have that constantly color one's work). For example, right now nothing could be truer than the first few words of "The Cat":

You need your Cat.
When you slump down
All tired and flat
With too much town . . .

But I can't find precisely in which of his books this poem first appeared, though it's in the 2005 Ted Hughes: Collected Poems for Children. Perhaps 2002's The Cat and the Cuckoo?

Too many people
Telling you what
You just must do
And what you must not. . .

And I must tell you to visit here for the entire poem. Meanwhile, I need a cat.