Divisions and Precisions

Ode to Max

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skill and natural defenses.

Max. Maxi-cat. Maximillian. Doofus-kitty. Goober.

Known by any and all of the above, Max is my baby and my greatest source of annoyance and cuddly moments. While perhaps not quite as dramatic as Scott's... The LIGER!, he's the source of much goofiness around the house.

I got him when he was much, much too tiny a kitten, probably no more than four weeks old, barely weaned. (Don't yell at me.. the people I got him from said he was eight weeks...) My personal theory is that because I got him so young, he bonded with me a lot stronger. When he was tiny, any time I stood near a counter, kitchen, bathroom, whatever, he would climb up my pantleg up to my shoulder and peek over to see what I was doing. This was only a problem once: when I was wearing a really really long top, and he crawled under the top and tried to keep climbing my bare back. Ouch!

He also used to have an arch-nemesis, in the form of a stuffed bear about five inches long. They were about the same size. From across the room, Max would stalk the hapless little green and pink (yeah, it was ugly) bear. In a flash, he'd pounce across the carpet and catch the Bear of Doom in his paws, rolling over and over with it. The Bear of Doom, I'm sorry to say, managed to win most of the wrestling matches, despite being completely inanimate. It wasn't until Max was much bigger that he was able to take his revenge, and reduce the Bear of Doom to a few ragged scraps of cloth.

We held a funeral for him. But of course, predator that he is, Max dug the tattered corpse from the trash. It's still lying around the house somewhere.

As attached to me as he is, Max tends to follow me around the house. Wherever it seems that I'm planning to spend time, there Max is. Even the bathroom. If I go in there and shut him out, he whines piteously at the door until I let him in. Saturday he followed me downstairs to the living room where I ate lunch and read. While we were sitting there, quiet and lazy, a neighborhood cat came to stand at the doorwall that leads to our 'backyard'. He and Max eyed each other through the glass for a moment, then Max decided the gauntlet had been thrown and he had to pounce the other cat. Some sort of macho feline thing, I guess. Fortunately for our visitor, and unfortunately for Max, my darling, brainy child forgot there was a half-inch of solid glass between him and his prey. He reared up, back arched, and made a strong, powerful leap forward... only to brain himself against the glass, chasing the other cat away.

Max didn't even bother with the 'I meant to do that' look. He was too stunned.

Forgive me for laughing at him. It was cruel, I know. He got back at me last night.

As often as once a week, there will be a night where I simply don't go to bed, or if I do, it isn't until 8am or so. Last night was one of those nights. Apart from being restless, I was talking to Brand online and so just never got around to the sleep thing. Inevitably, when I do this, Max can't sleep either. It's like he won't give up and really go to bed until I do. He'll nap on the floor or whatever, but until I get in the bed and turn off the lights, he's restless. So he ends up getting into things and wandering around and whining. It unsettles him, I guess. Somewhere around 4am, I hear a thundering, rattling noise from somewhere in the apartment. To my tired and overactive imagination, for a moment, it sounded remarkably like the noises in the woods in "The Blair Witch Project". I sent Brand a message to the effect of "Crashing noise in the next room. Going to see what it is. BRB [Translation: be right back.]. It'd damn well better be the cat."

With a pounding heart, I reached the bathroom and peeked in, to find Max standing on the bathroom counter looking at the glass shower door and meowing pitifully. He did this over and over and over last night. I figure either 1) for some feline reason, he had to be in the shower last night, and I wasn't properly removing the obstacles, or 2) something evil really was in there, that only he could see, and he was trying to protect me, or (and this just occurred to me) 3) he saw his buddy the neighborhood cat behind the glass and thought he'd give it another try.

Sweet boy, my Max, but not too bright.