[t]heir actual utility is debatable, even as mousers.

Poems certainly cannot be counted upon to keep pest populations under control (though the ability to quote certain among them does tend to drive away a fair percentage of pick-up line artistes). As with cats, it is difficult to identify with any certainty their practical function. Still, those who love them could hardly be expected to live without them, and their very impracticality makes this so. Said William Carlos Williams:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems,
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Of course, any post about cats and poetry ought to give the last words to Christopher Smart:

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
(read the rest at Poem Hunter)

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