Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.<br />His name, as I ought to have told you before,<br />Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss<br />To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.<br />His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,<br />And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.<br />Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —<br />But no longer a terror to mice or to rats.<br />For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;<br />Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time.<br />And whenever he joins his friends at their club<br />(which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)<br />He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,<br />With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.<br />For he once was a Star of the highest degree —<br />He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.<br />And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,<br />Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.<br />But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,<br />Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.