That is a cat respectable,

Connectable

With selectable

Felines respectable,

Whose names would make you quiver.

That is a cat of piety,

Not satiety,

But sobriety.

Its very purr is of piety

And thanks to its Feline Giver.

—Sinclair Lewis

Photo from Northeastern's 1972 yearbook.

Chris Piuma, rapier sharpened by a battery of Latin examinations, offers today's Tic Tac Toe-generated story.

Our Tic Tac Toe generator builds stories out of the one-letter words X and O.  Here's an example.  To play along, see below for instructions and a link to a template.

"I wish something that rhymes with boat would strike me."  From Otterbein's 1911 yearbook.

"The pleasant books, that silently among our household treasures take familiar places, and are to us as if a living tongue spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces."

From East Carolina's 1930 yearbook.

"My Life Like a Feather Pillow."  From Tenderloin Times, April-May 1981.

We encountered a charming wizard's song in "What If a Witch?" by Elaine McQueen (Ethos, 1964). 

I came from there

and now I'm here

and tomorrow I'll be

I don't know where ...

I'm a flunk at ghosts

I can't make toasts

and instead of boiling

my cauldron roasts ...

My name is ___,

a wizard by whim.

I spin magic marvels

when daytime grows dim ...

But you're all so friendly

I'll try to be good

and put all my magic

away in the wood.

"Poets not writing poetry?" -- turns out that poets never have written poetry.  It's all been a big scam.  From The Gateway, 1982.

Morning sends the vampires, wraiths, and ghouls of night back to the mouth of hell.  From The Wave, 1894.

"Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded." —Gertude Stein

"Colors seen by candle-light will not look the same by day." —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Never think she loves him wholly, never believe her love is blind, all his faults are locked securely in a closet of her mind." —Sara Teasdale

From West Virginia Wesleyan's 1958 yearbook.

From Sarnia's 1927 yearbook.

"'And the stately ships go on / To their haven under the hill' — / Freighted with joys of banished years / The port of fond memory to fill."  From Salem's 1929 yearbook.

In the second line, we find "corse," the original spelling of "corpse."  The p, eventually added in honor of the Latin corpus, was initally silent.

From Peter Homunculus by Gilbert Cannan, 1909.

From General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, and Other Poems by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, 1913.

By Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, in Forum, 1914.

"What has he done?  I cannot say.  We'll find out to-morrow, and beat him today."  A century later, this isn't a nonsense rhyme but the way our "justice" system works.  From Nursery Rhymes, illustrated by Claud Lovat Fraser, 1922.

As you suspected, the moon is a holy owl-queen who pours a jar of owls upon wicked mousies.  From General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, and Other Poems by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, 1913.