Why Haven’t Cave Cats Evolved?

If you’re in the right frame
Of mind for world-building,
Then adding blind cave cats

To your cavern planet
Might be a good idea.
One good idea, at least.

You’d have to have a lot
Of species that made sense
In those ecosystems

You imagined for them,
Deep in conversation
With stalactite tunnels,

Hunting the blind cave mice.
And then—since you’re human,
Narrating for humans—

You’d need mysterious,
Troglophilic persons
Haunting the caves themselves,

Beautiful, slender-limbed,
And elvish, near-sighted,
Nearly ageless as olms,

Maybe hunting with help
From those predatory,
Magical, blind cave cats.

Can you sense the darkness,
The intimate absence
Of illumination

Lacking changing weather,
Yet? Now a visitor
Sets in motion the chain

Of events that upend
This quiet, settled world,
Propelling your hero

Onto the harsh surface,
Into the terrible light,
Where aliens from Earth—

No—portal travelers
From your world and your time,
Have arrived, having found

A link between the worlds,
One tunnel in a maze
Of networked threads binding

All the worlds together.
The cavern world’s woven
With diamonds and metals,

Which humans find, meaning
Your hero’s sweet people
Are doomed without the help

Of that first visitor,
And the fact that what ties
All the worlds together

Is one vast tapestry
Of squeezes, belly crawls,
Windows, speleogens,

And boneyards that only
Blind cave cats can traverse.
Hero and visitor,

Turned lovers, assemble
A blind cave cat army. . . .
Now you have a story.