Spectator competition winners: T.S. Eliot’s cats get to grips with the 21st century

The latest competition asked for poems featuring one of T.S. Eliot’s practical cats getting to grips with the modern world.

Your 21st-century reincarnations of Eliot’s felines (the poems were originally published in 1939 and inspired by the poet’s four-year-old godson, who invented the words ‘pollicle’ for dogs and ‘jellicle’ for cats) were terrific, making it especially difficult to decide on the winners. Some fine Macavitys narrowly missed the cut (take a bow, Nick Syrett, David Shields and Hamish Wilson), as did Bill Greenwell’s Jellicles and Brian Allgar’s Growltiger, the Tory Cat.

This week’s top cats are printed below and pocket £35 each.

Sylvia Fairley
Bustopher Jones has firm flesh on his bones,
In short, he has ceased to be fat,
He had a rebirth and he’s saving the earth,
He’s a Vegan Society cat.

And this is the reason, when game is in season,
He turns his impeccable back,
And the merest glimpse of those winkles and
shrimps
Makes him yearn for a plant-based quick snack.