Story Power

Blogging the Lit Life

Date: December 15, 2024

The Consequence of “Feline” Hungry – An Analysis of Tomcat Disposables as Poetry

Considered by fans as one of his most emotional songs on an album the artist labels his formerly intended “musical suicide note” (interview with Prelude Press, January 4, 2023), “Tomcat Disposables”, a reference to the brand of mouse trap by the same name, is the opening track to Will Woods In case I make it. As it was written at such a low point in his life, the album captures the feeling of the different ways life can painfully disintegrate around you, and how to move on. 

Based on a true story of a mouse that lived in his home, who he poisoned due to fear of disease, the song follows the short life narrated by the mouse himself. Throughout the song, the rhetorical question,

Do I belong in right and wrong?

Nature, I guess

is posed to the audience, likely intended for just humanity in general, and shows the main theme, the question of who or what gets to determine the worth of a life, and more realistically, why do we as humans think that it’s us?

When talking about his future (which, while it is personification, mice do actually have foresight and can comprehend time the same way people do, and are capable of planning for the future and maintaining a schedule without help.) the mouse discusses dreams of things many humans aspire to do in their life, such as starting a family, and just general satisfaction, which is meant to deepen the idea that the mice and humans lives are worth the same. However one of the notable things the mouse dreams of is an abundance of food, especially cheese. This results in a ongoing metaphor over the course of the song, equating food to worth, as can be seen in how the mouse says,

And my mind’s not one bite smaller or lesser than yours

which continues the same idea, adding to it with the fact that if the mouse is able to conceptualize and form his own opinions on the topic, then it should be valued.

This idealization of cheese is continued in the mouse’s question of,

Is there cheese in the great beyond?

Rinds of parmesan

Wine to water, night from dawn

comparing the moon and cheese as an ideal afterlife to the idea of heaven in Christianity. In the song, and throughout the album ( as is most obvious in the song “Vampire reference in a minor key”, and the album cover being a moon made of cheese), the moon and darkness is used to represent safety, as the nocturnal mouse has free range of the house while the humans are asleep, as well as it being his time to dream. As the opposite, light and daytime is portrayed as dangerous. All this to say that the mouse’s belief that the moon, a sign of safety and an ideal afterlife, is made of cheese is not that different from a human’s belief in a man, who to some represents safety and is related to an ideal afterlife, that can change water to wine.

Finally, foreshadowing is used many times throughout the song. The first and biggest time being the 9th through 11th lines of the song which covers the ending.

Till then, I’ll dream of the day my odds and ends fit

I’ll wake up, there’ll be food on the stove

Forever and never want for more

While the mouse says he hopes his “odds and ends fit” as a way of expressing his hope for future satisfaction, there is also a double meaning of how the word “odds” can relate to probability and “ends” to death. The mouse is characterized mainly as hopeful, and more importantly for this, cautious. Always keeping his distance even if it means going without food or warmth. At the end of the song, He meets his literal end by poisoned food on the stove, after not weighing his odds, making it so his odds didn’t “fit” with his ends. Other examples of foreshadowing in the song commonly feature facts about mouse biology, such as

So I crawled out of the wall and squinting

Saw hope on the stovetop

Just like I’d always imagined it

where brightness that would cause a human to squint represents the danger of the food, but squinted eyes for a mouse is a behavior exhibited when stressed or in pain. This lets the audience know that the mouse’s death really is a consequence of him throwing away his caution as he was blinded by his excitement and hunger.

Especially when paired with songs like “Euthanasia” from the same album, “Tomcats Disposables” is a heart wrenching song that leaves its listeners with a saddening answer to its question, what determines the worth of a life? The answer according to the song just seems to be that they should all hold equal weight, and the main cause of that not being the case is the biased idea of nature we’ve created, heavily weighted in our favor.

Why “Money Trees” by Kendrick Lamar is poetry.

On October 22nd, 2012, Kendrick Lamar released his 2nd studio album “good kid, m.A.A.d city”. In this album, he talks about growing up and being a teenager in Compton, California. Now, out of all the songs on the album, the one that interested me the most was “Money Trees“, the fifth song on the album.

I think what caught my attention most about this song is how it’s the start of Kendrick’s realization of the situation he’s in, and a bird’s eye view on it. He goes from delivering lines that kind of have a “this is how things have been and always will be” attitude, to realizing how easily he could get killed  and that he eventually has to find a way out, having dreams of doing so.

Uh, me and my tryna get it, ya bish.
Hit the house lick, tell me, is you with it, ya bish?

Kendrick begins the song with these 2 incredibly broad lines. On one hand, he’s direct with what he says, outright saying he’s robbing a house. On the other hand, he refers to another action as “it”. This is purposeful, as he wants to display the multitude of wants he and his friends had. Whether it be money, power, fame, respect, he says it all by saying essentially nothing. His tone in this entire section up to the next lyrics emphasized is one of in the moment, justifying his actions as well. he’s knowledgeable, he understands that this is bad, that this could even get him killed, yet continues following it as it’s the only thing he can do.

A silver spoon, I know you come from, ya bish (Ya bish, ya bish)
And that’s a lifestyle that we never knew (We never knew, we never knew)
Go at a reverend for the revenue

Here, Kendrick points out someone on the street that comes from riches. “Silver spoon”, is a common way to refer to a rich person, and seeing them as easy game to rob, especially considering that this person is walking around Compton rather than their own neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the line “Go at a reverend for the revenue” outright states their desperation for one of the aforementioned “its”: money. They want for money so desperately they attack a reverend, a title often withheld by Christian ministers. Unlike the previous lines, he just ends it as is. He doesn’t justify it, again, he knows its wrong. Rather than giving excuses, like “he never knew the good life” or using the lack of security to rob a house, he cuts the line short, almost as if he’s unsettled by the desperation, hesitant to do it.

It go Halle Berry or hallelujah
Pick your poison, tell me what you doin’

Kendrick in this line is essentially saying “I can either do good and get good, or can live with what I got around me, and give in”, another realization of his situation. As he states in the analysis of this line, “[…]hallelujah being the more good in me and Halle Berry being the actual vice of what’s going down – the lust for the money, the lust for this mission we are about to go on”. Pick your poison refers to the urgency of the decision. Either he does good, or not, but he doesn’t have time to analyze the options. He has to choose left or right, now.

A dollar might just f*** your main b****
That’s just how I feel, nah
A dollar might say f*** them that you came with
That’s just how I feel, nah, nah
A dollar might just make that lane switch
That’s just how I feel, nah
A dollar might turn to a million and we all rich
That’s just how I feel

This is another realization of Kendrick. He knows what he’s chasing at this very moment, being money, and he knows how badly it could turn on him. Yet, he’s also attracted to the idea of how quickly it could make the switch, from bad to good. A lottery ticket, literally or figuratively.

[Bridge: Anna Wise]

This entire section is an onomatopoeia, and is a list that serves as rules for Kendrick and his friend’s to abide by to get their so-called “Money Trees”. The repetition makes it although as it’s something of a constant reminder, that they are desperate to follow these rules. It’s another example of Kendrick’s realization of the dehumanization of his situation.

 

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