Raminagrobis.
My name. It rhymes with ‘me’.
I am the cat of Nicolas Flamel.
Who’s he when he’s at home?
The alchemist from hell.
He’s short and shrewd and shrivelled like a gnome,
Lugubrious, a strange, eccentric bloke
Who walks the streets of Paris after dark.
The milk he gives me’s leady; it’s no joke!
Where does he get this lead he turns to gold?
From off the roofs of churches, so I’m told,
And mostly off the roof of Notre-Dame.
He does it like a burglar, for a lark.
Ingredients: he weighs them by the gram.
He’s fond of yellow sulphur and ceruse.
A draper, one of this town’s biggest go-tos,
Came to him not long ago for ointment
To put on his right hand to swing a sword,
To strengthen it to help him win a duel.
His life was at stake. He couldn’t afford
The dire consequence of disappointment.
His hand made super-strong, he won.
My master though’s no fool
And when a payment for this service failed to come,
He took the hand for what he’d done
Just as he’d said he would.
He caused it first a magistrate to slap
Repeatedly. Its owner was condemned
To grace a gibbet at Pontoise,
To be stretched on a rack.
Storm clouds across the sun did scud.
The executioner, bad-mannered, blew framboises;
Of criminals he’d never been a friend.
And when the dead man’s hand came back to life,
The hangman cut it off with a big knife
And off it scampered. After it I ran
To catch it. Had the draper been a better man,
There would have been no need for this palaver
So upsetting and uncivil.
The hand my master let me nibble
And after store with dead mice in my larder.
