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Fast food-chain

Nuzzling earth,
and skitting bleached stalks,
they’ve been waiting for it all their lives
in uneasy equilibrium,
doe eyed and flicking flies -
when
in a twitch of grass
a quiver rushes to pouring
liquid cat
through the
gaps
in scattered patterns.

Evolved systems hit high gear,
as horses shoot the adrenaline bolt
(How can grass have this many calories?)
They're a goner
either way.
With a feline passport through space,
ground is just an appetiser
to the main,
coursing on a runner
(through the salad);
and it’s level-headed pursuit
which gulps steadily down
veering vectors to
a barcode target.

Still at least the wait around here's not too bad,
with service pretty sharp -
a carpet’s swept from under
stick table legs,
driving a dust-rolled meal
battered
with all the malice of
a grocery shopper.

Needles on the end of a sledgehammer
job lot this journey,
in a discovery of blood-pumped muscle.
It's cat-kissed lipstick for a feast,
hurriedly applied
from hot haunches.

There's a stripey kick out of all this
(oh, the embarassment of dying in your pyjamas),
but there's no getting up for
wet eyes here.
Black, white and red all over,
just another scrunched up savannah story,
still,
the rare peace of being in-between and -
then she’s back in circulation.