Solomon The Cat is a story by Michael Rosen from the book, Selected Poems.
Transcript[]
DISCLAIMER: This is a transcript for a video of Michael performing the poem/book, not a transcript from the actual poem/book itself.
Solomon The Cat.
I was seven, there was a competition in the paper. It was, write a story and the best story would be printed. I thought I go for it. So I'm sitting there with my paper and I'm thinking of this book I read at school about, Solomon The Cat who gets thrown out, and goes from house to house asking for somewhere to be put up. So, I think…I could write a story like that. I called it "Solomon The Cat". And I wrote how Solomon gets thrown out and goes from house to house asking for somewhere to be put up. I sent it in, and I won the competition. And it was printed in the paper. "Solomon The Cat, by Michael Rosen, age seven-and-three quarters."
My mum and dad were very pleased with me. It got printed in the paper’s Christmas annual, too. "Solomon The Cat, by Michael Rosen, age seven-and-three quarters." Sometime later, we got a letter from the paper saying they had heard from someone who’d said they’d bought a children’s picture book about a cat called Solomon, who gets thrown out and goes from house to house asking for somewhere to be put up. "See this, Con?" my dad says to my mum. "See this? Someone’s stolen Mick’s story, and made a book out of it. Would you believe it, the things people do. If I had the time, I’d try and get a hold of that book and sue the pants off them!" "No, no, no, no," I said, "Uh, I shouldn’t bother. It was ages ago."
Not long ago, I got a letter from a girl in America. She said she had won a state poetry competition judged by the poet John Ciardi. She had won with a poem that went "Down behind the dustbin, I met a dog called Jim. He didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him." "You wrote that poem, Mr. Rosen", she said, "and now they want to print it in the paper. What shall I do?" I sent her a letter back and said, "Don’t worry. I know someone who once wrote a story called Solomon the Cat who gets thrown out and goes from house to house…" You can probably guess the rest.
Trivia[]
- Down Behind The Dustbin is referenced when Michael got a letter from an American girl.
Used in poops[]
- Solomon the Cat is a common character in YTPs.
