where do street cats go when it snows?

from my fire escape i wonder,
and hope they find themselves in shelter,
to pick the meat off spare-rib bones.

from the third story window i see them scamper
    those cats are skin and skeleton.
there, under a car, one hides,
can you see it? it whines at the empty moon
for sympathy - a break in flurry just long enough
    to offer a chance to survive.
but snow, set in its ways, cannot understand
how, unlike itself, not all things melt,
get carried to the sky and
lie in wait to someday meet the earth again.

and look at all that snow. all those snowflakes
that melt on my warm hand. those beautiful snowflakes
that pass like ash cast from the tip of
    some neglectful god's cigar,
    banished upon
the once green carpet of this world.
   all those heavy white snowflakes, look.
    look at all those fat snowflakes,
    those cruel and god-damned snowflakes.