Cat Scatomancy

By Shastra Deo


 

Shastra Deo responds to Panda Wong and Jenny Zhang’s conversation, Yesterday’s Goo, with a poem.


‘Nothing about her can disgust me.’
— Jenny Zhang


My prophets found futures
by watching the birds. Flight
or cry, or mastery of both.
You eat birds. Make meaning
of them that way, spit forth

feathers spelling the end
of Uranus in retrograde.
Digestive divination. Or the
revelation of last night’s sardine
saturnalia. Let’s not mention

the goopy poops. I watched
a TikTok that told me cats
stop burying their shit when they’ve
claimed territory. There you are
thinking, this is my home. I’m

safe now. But I know better.
You’re the stinkiest soothsayer
around. A Reddit witch claimed
I could write my enemy’s name
on paper and place it in your

litterbox, a spell to send crap
their way. A waste of waste!
Oracular cat, we already share
the same bathroom. Share
your dreams with me, too?

Teach me to read providence
better than the guts in your belly
where all fortune is made.


Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne, and lives in Brisbane. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP 2017), won the 2016 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 ALS Gold Medal. Her second book, The Exclusion Zone (UQP 2023), was longlisted for the 2024 ALS Gold Medal. She was the 2024 LIMINAL x Hyphenated Projects Writing Fellow.

The Liminal Festival took place 2–4 August 2024, in partnership with The Wheeler Centre. This collection of work is in concert with, and responds to, the panels, conversations and provocations put forth by some of the nation’s most talented writers, artists and thinkers. Find out more about the Liminal Festival here.


Leah McIntosh