These verses were originally meant to be additional verses to my 1999 poem The Dream Chaser but although they address a similar theme I felt they evoked much more active imagery. Hence I separated them into a poem in their own right.

The poem contemplates the stars from a cats point of view (how does a cat perceive the stars?) believing those little twinkling specks could be chased if they could be reached.

By the time I wrote this poem I had already created two cat artworks, The Dream Chaser and, a year later, The Watcher both inspired by the first poem. I felt these two artworks were quite strong and wanted to produce more paintings but those original nine lines weren’t enough to keep my imagination going.

I sat down and wrote ‘Catching the Stars’ and used it as inspiration for seven more cat themed artworks which I exhibited online in 2004-2005 for three months on their own dedicated exhibition web site called ‘Sleeping Cats’.

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