Bad, Bad Cats by Roger McGough
Publication Details
Roger McGough Bad, Bad Cats Puffin,1997 ISBN 0-140-38391-3
The Author
Roger McGough, OBE, was born in Liverpool in 1937.
He studied at St Mary's College, Liverpool and then at Hull University, before taking up secondary school teaching and lecturing at colleges including the Liverpool College of Art.
A well-known member of the 1960s pop group The Scaffold (which had several toe-tapping hits, including Lily the Pink and Thank U Very Much), he is alsp a founder-member of a group of like-minded writers, called "The Liverpool poets", who collaborated on several poetry collections. (The first of which was The Liverpool Scene in 1967.)
Roger has written, either on his own or with other people, over 60 poetry books and collections. He also writes scripts, poetry and lyrics for radio, television and film and presents a BBC Radio 4 programme – "Poetry Please". Roger lives in Twickenham, London with his family.
Awards
1984 Signal Book Award Sky in the Pie
1985 BAFTA Kurt, Mungo, BP and Me
1993 BAFA The Elements
1997 OBE for services to poetry.
1999 Cholmondeley Award
1999 Signal Book Award Bad, Bad Cats
Curriculum Context
Bad, Bad Cats is most suitable for KS2 pupils, although some poems could be read with younger pupils.
Roger writes in the everyday English of conversation, often combining ordinary words with unusual thoughts and emotions.
The Poems
The collection is divided into three parts: The Cats' Protection League, Waxing Lyrical and Carnival of the Animals.
The Cats' Protection League
Roger's poems often look at everyday life from unusual and imaginative angles and appeal to a wide age-range of readers.
The Cats Protection League poems take an irreverent look at the darker side of anthropomorphised cats, turning the cosy image of the domestic, fireside cat on its head (e. g. in 'Mafia Cats': 'We're the Mafia cats/ Bugsy, Franco and Toni… at home we are/ Mopsy, Ginger and Tiddles.')
The title poem, 'The Cats' Protection League', sets up the idea of scams and fiddles, as the poet argues with the Boss-cat who demands protection money in vernacular gangland language: 'Pay your dues or the toms will call… A smelly minefield awaits you at dawn.' (Boys, in particular, might like to illustrate these images.)
Fur Exchange uses the first person narrator, as the cat extorts 'a fiver' for the safe and 'fur exchange' of a family's kitten; the plural voice threatens the reader as 'Mafia Cats' draws on imagery of gangster land and films: 'On St Valentine's Day/ We massacre mice … wear shades... sharp suits, drive Lamborghinis'.
While the two following poems, 'A Night on the Tiles' and 'Curtains', are told through the voice of a young child worrying aloud about the disappearance of her pet Mopsy (not knowing, of course, that Mopsy is a member of the cat mafia).
Children can have real fun with these poems: they could produce dramatic readings, working out who is speaking and when, rewriting some poems (e.g. 'Fur Exchange') entirely as scripts, with stage and voice directions as well as gestures.
'The Cats' Protection League' with its combination of direct speech and narrative, could be marked, annotated and read out in parts.
'Mafia Cats' lends itself to part and chorus readings. The importance of expressive reading, as well as tone and volume, could be worked on. Dramatic conventions such as asides could be noted and discussed.
> Mopsy's young owner could write a diary entry for 'A Night on the Tiles' and 'Curtains'.
> 'A Night on the Tiles' and 'Curtains' could be used to introduce children to different combinations of simple end-rhyme schemes (such as alternate-line rhyme) through cloze exercises (abcb), substituting missing words either of their own or from the missing words listed at the end of the page.
> Storyboards based on these poems could be created and IT tasks might involve importing graphics and images and using different fonts to reflect the personalities of different speakers (e.g. Rockwell Extra Bold for the feline narrator of 'Fur Exchange'), or using different widths and types (bold, italics, underlined) of Arial to reflect the changing emotions of Mopsy's owner as she works through her worries in 'A Night on the Tiles'.
> Group work or differentiated IT tasks could include multimedia tasks: creating a PowerPoint presentation of extracts from the poems for example, with explanatory and linking elements, such as a spoken introduction, the use of music and other effects (e.g. guns popping, 'creepy' and 'dangerous' sound effects). Most recent versions of PowerPoint have numerous exciting animation schemes that could be used to motivate children and enhance their presentation (e.g. flashbulb, spin, zoom, bounce, float, pinwheel). Digital photographs of pupils' pet cats could be cut and pasted into the presentations, leading to discussions on typecasting and stereotyping according to appearance.
> 'Vamoose' is written in Stateside slang using the dialect and pace of classic gangland film parodies, such as Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone. Children could conduct a websearch to check meanings of unfamiliar dialect words; they might re-write their own version in Standard English, then discuss why dramatic effect is lost. They could research the background to and read extracts from the play Bugsy Malone and prepare background material based on this for introducing this set of five poems to another class.
Forms of poetry
This collection features several poetic forms. The ironically-titled poem of the main section, 'Waxing Lyrical', combines McGough's typical use of upbeat statements with serious tones and with lyrical, time-out-of-mind and surreal phrasing. Compare the swift change of mood even within verses, for example:
I polish the car every Sunday
I polish the Sunday as well
to
I polish the years, and the yearnings
I polish the fears and the smell
Twist at the end
McGough always avoids sentimentality by using a joke to lighten the mood before it threatens to become too sombre. This often occurs at the end of a poem, such as:
I polish the language of angels
The horn of the unicorn too
If you think this poem is rubbish
Then I'll call round and polish off you!
In 'A Great Poem', McGough personifies a poem, using metaphors to compare it to a painting worthy of being hung in the Tate, or an 'intellectually first-rate' musical piece, before subverting his assertion that it is 'wondrous' and 'fabulous' with a playground chant, a rhetorical question and a self-deprecatory signing-off:
Five-six-Seven-Eight
What do we appreciate?
This poem.
(Who says it's great?)
Roger McGough
This technique of making a tongue-in-cheek aside to round off a poem is used in the chatty 'My Brilliant Friend'. Children could learn and recite this repetitive and cheeky poem, then write their own version, substituting a different adjective for 'brilliant', and other verbs or nouns instead of 'karate/darts/acting (and so on), while still keeping the original scansion.
Self-help poems
In this collection the overall mood is light-hearted. This is obvious in seven running gags, self-help or 'how to' poems.
Topics vary from the zany and absurd, such as '5 Ways to Stop Grizzly Bears from Spoiling Your Picnic' (complete with footnotes to explain grizzly bear-speak); to the whimsical '5 Ways to Stop Snowmen Raiding the Fridge' the humorous '3 Ways to Stop Alligators from Biting Your Bottom When You are on the Toilet' and the catalogue of childhood fears: '5 Ways to Keep Vampires out of Your Bedroom' and '5 Ways to Spot the Real Witch at a Hallowe'en Party'.
Children can extend the shortest of these poems, adding their own numbered instructions, replicating the two-line layout. Older children could add in their own thinking-aloud elision marks in a stream-of-consciousness (as in … Grizzly Bears).
They might discuss, then present their work, employing variation in tone, volume, accent and so on. Poems could be created using bullet points rather than numbered points, and the reasons for both, in terms of argument and persuasiveness, discussed.
Older pupils could write their own parodies based on 'Concise Hints for New Teachers' following a whole-class discussion on what they, as pupils, notice about new teachers' habits and idiosyncrasies.
Conundrums and Jokes
Roger McGough has been described as a verbal acrobat (Styles, 1998). His characteristic use of puns extends to deceptively simple titles and encapsulates ideas in ultra-precise, two-word, four-line ditties (e.g 'Penultimate Poem') which could be integrated briefly into lessons on homophones.
Well-known and accessible poetic forms such as limericks (e.g. 'Chutney') and shape poems ('A Weak Poem') also appear.
Simple two-line riddles are broken into one-word lines that accentuate the fun inherent in written and spoken language – (see 'Ticklish' and its companion-piece, 'Picklish').
'Digdgeridoo' extends this fun element by incorporating short definitions of interesting words, such as catfish, sticklebacks, terrapins, bloodhounds, and the squelchier and bottom-humour-appreciators of 'tapeworms' and 'headlice'.
Children can find their own interesting compound-word creatures (possible links could be made with a Minibeasts project).
They could investigate and deduce the form and rhythm of Roger's poem (i.e. three definitions separated into two lines each), followed by the refrain.
Writing frames could be used with the original title, refrain in each verse, and final three-line verse provided, if necessary.
Images of real or fictitious creatures can be added and displayed with the poems.
Parodies and intertextual references
The regular metre of some poems such as 'A Knight on a Glass Mountain Bike' can be explored, annotated, and read aloud to emphasise the rhythm and rhyme, as illustrated by Roger 'cheating' on the final word, confounding the reader's expectations.
The role reversals of the characters can be discussed and the children can remind themselves of similar examples they have read in alternative fairy stories.
Allusions to other poetic works including classical poems (e.g. Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Mercie' in 'The Sting') can be referenced and sourced using texts such as 'The New Where's That Poem?' (Blackwells, 1996) or by conducting a websearch, using the archaic words (such as 'loiter') and phrases (such as 'alone and pale') to which the poet draws attention through repetition.
(This is quite a demanding task if the original poet's name is not provided, but it is workable and will provide a challenge for those pupils who need it).
The same task can be carried out with one or two references to poems as diverse as the work of Ted Hughes, as well as nursery rhymes, poems of the First World War, and Aesop's Fables. References to popular contemporary texts appear in poems such as 'Where's Wally?'.
Musical titles also feature in 'Born to Bugle' – children may recognise this one if they have seen the film Billy Elliot. Although this is essentially a 'fun' poem, McGough's ability to show us the 'shadow round the corner' kicks in here, again in a twist in the tail of the poem, with his reference to The Last Post.
The humorous take on Wordsworth's classic poem about daffodils, while irreverent and colloquial, also includes a footnote that could encourage reading and enjoying the original poem, and comparing it with McGough's.
Children could research Roger McGough on relevant websites (see Bibliography for suggested starting points) to look for clues to his influences in poetry and music.
Other contemporary poets being studied in class (e.g. Michael Rosen) can be researched in the same way, and influences on their writing noted and tracked in future readings.
Author profiles with quotations (properly referenced and with websites noted) can be compiled.
Children could then compare and contrast how different poets approach similar themes and everyday issues.
Re-workings of earlier poems
Roger McGough's subversive playfulness underlies many of his poems. Children can research the poetic techniques he uses in his earlier poems and then re-read the Bad Bad Cats observing how the techniques appear in similar guises in these poems.
For example, 'Plague Around' literally 'plays around' with the similar sounds and potential sources of confusion in 'plague around' and 'playground', particularly when words are run together in casual everyday speak. This idea was first used by McGough in a poem called 'The Potato Clock'.
Children can browse his anthologies of poems to locate this poem, and find others that provide the original model or pattern for poems in Bad Bad Cats (e.g. 'The Reader of this Poem' for 'The Writer of This Poem').
Themes
Recurring themes in this collection chime with many of those in McGough's earlier poems. Poetry is mentioned in many poems. 'Moan' only mentions poetry in the final line, but lends itself to humorous writing about opposites that rhyme.
The absurdities of daily life loom large and are reflected in a wide variety of tone and rhythms, e.g. the 'no-gain-without-pain' mentality of the gym in 'Train Train'
One two and step
and lift and groan
and two and pull
and sweat and moan
again, neatly subverted in the desperate humorous final lines: Train Train every day/ Ah, my station. Excuse me, this is where I get off
School features in many poems: 'Here Come the Dinner Ladies' is nicely observed (as well as ammunition for Jamie Oliver's healthy school dinners campaign!) McGough is not afraid to mention the frailer side of human life.
His short and straightforward shape poem 'A Weak Poem' picks up some of the problems' of modern childhood – eating junk food/ And going to bed too late. This poem might be used to stimulate discussion about healthy lifestyles.
McGough is aware of the unpleasant side of childhood experience and the disappointments which barely register with others; the sheer misery felt, but often suppressed, of their everyday lives, particularly when it involves school; he is aware of the inadequacies both of teachers and pupils, as well as parents.
He makes his points with humour and precision, 'writing simultaneously with a child's voice and an adult's understanding (Styles, 1998). '
in pithy four-liners such as Misspelt Youth
As a poet I'm a duckling
Who dreams of being a swan
For though my rhymes are sparkling
My spelling lets me dwon.
McGough often approaches the mundane in unexpected ways. 'The House' deals with moving house in an unsentimental way, while 'The Going Pains' deals with the hurt of being constantly bossed about. The effect is achieved through simple humour, direct speech (the bossy bits) and a yearning to narrative tone
Children can browse and choose poems and then compare the treatment of these themes with poems by other poets, noting their similarities and differences in terms of tone, mood, use of rhyme, rhythm, imagery, and so on.
Carnival of the Animals
This final section of the collection is based on the musical burlesque by Saint-Saens. McGough calls this a 'good bit of verse rather than an ordinary bit of poetry.' Saint-Saens' original orchestral pieces reflect the character, movements and appearance of each animal, with hens and cockerels portrayed in jittery, scratchy-bowed violins, staccato phrasing to indicate hens scratching in the dust, and trills indicating crowing roosters, and so on.
The torpor of Trouble the Tortoise is parodied in painfully slow, dissonant phrases, while the elephant is brought to life in a lumbering waltz, and fast, mellifluous scales imitate the agile movements and regal nature of the lion
McGough's poems are written mainly in four line verses, with clear end-rhymes, often abcb or abab. Several have a first-person narrator where the speaker's character comes through their choice of vocabulary and rhythm. 'Trouble the Tortoise' uses two-syllable words and compound words (slowness… tortoise-hell) double-spaced and with alternate lines indented, as if to emphasise that need to be read aloud with heavy stresses:
I live life in the fast lane
My middle name is Trouble
The elephant's nature is reflected in plosive words and those chosen to reiterate his size – trumpeting…and giant... gentle and strong… lumber… While 'The Pianists'' repetitive keyboard exercises are portrayed in tricky fricatives that trip off the tongue in alliterative phrases:
... pianists practising… stuttering staccato… practice makes perfect.
The gliding grace of swans is burlesqued in 'Swans' (Poets love them. But not this one), where Roger mentions their aristocratic origins, their elegance and supposed gentility, only to subvert it in irreverent, comical similes:
With a neck like a stunted giraffe
And a beak that glows like a Satsuma
Children could use keyboards and other instruments, as well as computer programmes to portray the movements of other well-known animals and insects. They could find their own surprising and unusual images to compare movements, appearances and perceived characters of these animals.
