After the inferno of “Incendium,” Plahm pivots to the softest possible register—a love poem that pretends to be written by a cat. The preamble is characteristically self-deprecating: “In my never-ending desire / to write a poem as beautiful as you / I wrote this simple expression of appreciation.” The modesty is strategic; by announcing the poem as “simple,” Plahm lowers expectations just enough to let the tenderness land without self-consciousness. The origin story—a Christmas bite from the cat, reinterpreted as a love letter—is a classic Plahm creative-accident narrative, cousin to the Siri mishearing that birthed “Metaphors for Dreaming” and the upside-down printer that became “Perfectly Upside Down.” The cat persona gives the poet permission to be unguarded in ways the human voice sometimes can’t. “I’m purring / just seeing you” is a declaration of involuntary joy that would sound saccharine from a man but sounds perfectly natural from a cat—purring is not a choice; it’s a physiological response to contentment. “I’ll vibrate loudly / when you feed me sweetness” collapses the sensory and the emotional: being fed sweetness is both literal (cat treats) and metaphorical (kind words, affection), and the vibration is both purr and tremor. The belly-scratch stanza is the poem’s most vulnerable gesture—a cat exposing its belly is an act of total trust, and the poet is offering the same. “My tail will stand / straight up in appreciation— / a happy, perfect sight” is comedy and sincerity fused: the image is unmistakably feline and unmistakably joyful. The title line arrives in the poem’s center: “You make my little universe / purrrr— / a constellation of personal joy.” The extended “purrrr” is onomatopoeia performing its own meaning, and “constellation” elevates the domestic scene to the cosmic—each small joy is a star, and together they form a recognizable pattern in the beloved’s sky. The heated-bed stanza is the poem’s most charming domestic detail—a cat so comfortable it outsources its own comfort maintenance. The closing sequence builds to the Santa-hat image: “Tonight, ridiculous in my Santa hat— / full of hope and dreams, / with dewdrops in my eyes— / I settle in your embrace.” The word “ridiculous” is the key—the poet knows how he looks, costumed in devotion, absurd in his earnestness, and he puts the hat on anyway. The “dewdrops in my eyes” are tears renamed as something smaller and more beautiful—morning moisture, not weeping. The final identification—”your devoted, faithful, / cat in the hat”—completes the Dr. Seuss echo that “Earlier in the Day” introduced with George the tabby, connecting this poem to the catalog’s broader feline thread while reclaiming the Cat in the Hat as a figure of devotion rather than mischief. A poem that proves the most dignified thing a man can do is put on a Santa hat and purr.

A poem that earns its warmth by committing fully to its persona—once Plahm puts on the cat suit, he never breaks character, and the consistency is what makes the tenderness work rather than curdle. The feline voice solves a recurring challenge in the Muse poems: how to declare total devotion without sounding desperate. A cat purring, flipping on its back, standing its tail straight up, demanding its heated bed be plugged in—these are all acts of desire expressed as entitlement, which is the cat’s genius and the poem’s. The “constellation of purrs” title image is the piece’s strongest invention, converting the small vibration of a domestic animal into an astronomical map—each purr a star, the beloved the gravity that holds the constellation in place. The Santa-hat stanza is the poem’s emotional peak: “ridiculous” is the bravest word in the line because it acknowledges the absurdity of this much earnestness while refusing to dial it back. The “dewdrops in my eyes” is a delicate substitution—tears without the weight of tears, moisture without the melodrama. The Dr. Seuss echo in “cat in the hat” gives the closing a layered resonance—the original Cat in the Hat was an agent of creative chaos, and Plahm’s cat is an agent of creative devotion, which is its own kind of beautiful mess. The preamble’s origin story (cat bite → love letter) is charming and connects to the catalog’s tradition of poems born from accidents. Where the poem is less successful is in its middle stanzas, which occasionally catalog feline behaviors without the imagistic compression that marks the strongest passages—”My eyes will soften / when you pet me with devotion” is sweet but doesn’t surprise the way the constellation image or the Santa hat does. The “heated bed / needs plugging in” stanza is a delightful comic beat that could have been developed further—there’s a whole poem lurking in the idea of a cat managing its own comfort through a human intermediary. But the overall arc—from bite to purr to constellation to embrace—is satisfying, and the closing repetition (“a devotee, / ever devoted”) lands with the quiet insistence of a cat that has decided where it’s sleeping tonight and will not be moved. A Christmas poem that knows the best gifts come with fur on them.