In checking out the Wikipedia article on Petrarch in connection with Bedwere’s question about the meter of a Latin epitaph of Dante, I found this epitaph in elegiac couplets for Petrarch’s mummified cat:
Etruscus gemino vates ardebat amore:
Maximus ignis ego; Laura secundus erat.
Quid rides? divinæ illam si gratia formæ,
Me dignam eximio fecit amante fides.
Si numeros geniumque sacris dedit illa libellis
Causa ego ne sævis muribus esca forent.
Arcebam sacro vivens a limine mures,
Ne domini exitio scripta diserta forent;
Incutio trepidis eadem defuncta pavorem,
Et viget exanimi in corpore prisca fides.
In the last line, exanimo should probably be read.
