The Cat and the Moon
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryA black cat dances under the moon, his eyes changing as it changes.
A cat wanders in the moonlight while the moon spins overhead, and the poem treats them as relatives: the cat is the moon's "nearest kin". Black Minnaloushe stares up, troubled in "his animal blood" by the cold light. The speaker invites him to dance, as two kindred might, and imagines the moon learning a new step from him. As the moon moves into a new phase, so the cat's pupils narrow and widen "from round to crescent". The poem ends with the cat creeping "Alone, important and wise", lifting his changing eyes to the changing moon. It is playful and light, but it hints at the moon's hold on every living thing.
Lines to remember
The cat went here and there
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
His changing eyes.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 4Cat and moon
The cat roams "here and there" while the moon "spun round like a top", a child's toy that makes the sky playful. Then comes the surprising claim that the cat is "the nearest kin of the moon", looking up at its relative.
Lines 5 to 8Troubled blood
Now the cat has a name, Minnaloushe. However he may "wander and wail", the "pure cold light" stirs something in "his animal blood". The contrast between cold, pure sky and warm, restless body runs through the whole poem.
Lines 9 to 16An invitation to dance
The speaker turns to address the cat directly: "Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?" When kindred meet, a dance is the natural greeting. The moon, perhaps "Tired of that courtly fashion" of its stately round, might learn "A new dance turn" from the cat.
Lines 17 to 24Phases and pupils
As Minnaloushe creeps "From moonlit place to place", the "sacred moon" has entered a new phase. The speaker wonders whether the cat knows that his own pupils change too, "From crescent to round", mirroring the moon's waxing and waning.
Lines 25 to 28Changing eyes
The last lines gather everything into one picture. The cat, "Alone, important and wise", lifts "to the changing moon / His changing eyes". The repeated "changing" binds them together, and the short final line lands like a closing chord.
Themes
Kinship
The poem's central idea is that the cat and the moon are "close kindred". Both are solitary, both move by night, and both change shape: the moon from crescent to full, the cat's pupils "from round to crescent". The dance the speaker proposes would be a family meeting between earth and sky.
Change
Words of change gather towards the end: "a new phase", "from change to change", "the changing moon", "His changing eyes". The cat does not understand this, yet he is caught up in it, his blood "Troubled" by the light. Everything in the poem moves in cycles, like the moon.
Play and mystery
The tone is light: a moon spinning "like a top", a cat "Lifting his delicate feet", a teasing question about dancing. Yet the moon is "sacred" and the cat "wise". The poem keeps the fun and the mystery side by side without choosing between them.
Context
The poem was collected in the enlarged edition of The Wild Swans at Coole, published by Macmillan in 1919. It sits near "The Phases of the Moon", in a group of poems from these years that take the changing moon as a pattern for human and animal life. Minnaloushe is usually said to have been Maud Gonne's black cat. Yeats later set the poem to be sung in his short play The Cat and the Moon.
Form
Twenty-eight short lines, mostly of three beats, printed as one block but moving in groups of four. The second and fourth line of each group rhyme, some fully ("feet" and "meet", "change" and "range"), some only loosely ("top" and "up", "would" and "blood"). The short, skipping lines suit a poem about a dance.