Hate That Cat

This section covers Jack’s poems and notes written between September 12 through November 27. In Jack’s first poem, inspired by Walter Dean Myers’s poem, “Love That Boy,” Jack writes about how much he hates a certain fat black cat. The next day, he apologizes to Miss Stretchberry because she likes cats and even has one. Jack is concerned he won’t remember everything she taught him about poetry last year, but he’s glad she is his teacher again because, as he puts it, she understands his brain. Jack claims he cannot write about his dog, Sky, anymore, as he wrote about Sky quite a bit last year. He explains that his Uncle Bill, a college professor, says that “those words” Jack wrote about Sky don’t count as poetry because poems must rhyme, maintain a regular meter, and use symbols, metaphors, and other figures of speech. Uncle Bill also says that Jack’s lines are too short and must be longer to count as “real writing.” However, when Jack tries to write longer lines, he isn’t sure where to put the commas, and he loses track of what he’s trying to say.