Max

The alternative title to this is “Grief”, because that is the word that is lodged in my head, but it’s not very specific, and Max is. I’m afraid this is going to be a little self-indulgent.

October 1995 started off a pretty bad year. That was when my father left, and then Frank, my RA died, and then one of our dogs, Alexander, started just wasting away from an undiagnosed congenital heart condition, and with college and things it felt like I could never be where I was needed, and I was getting so burned out on classes, and then Frosty died.

Frosty was the last of Sheba’s kittens, and he had lived to fifteen, which seemed like a good age for a cat, especially one who’d had as many medical problems as he had (skin cancer and a hereditary urinary issue that had required surgery). He had outlasted everyone, and he went peacefully, but now we had lost a dog and a cat too close together.

With Mom volunteering with the greyhound adoption group, we would always find more dogs. At the time, we did not even realize how true that would end up being, because it was so new. But from 1978 to 1996, our cats had been Sheba and her kittens. We had tried other cats, and they had run away, but somehow Sheba had decided she loved us, and her kittens had known us since they were born. It was the end of an era, and as much as we loved cats, it did not feel right, or even possible, to just go out and get another one.

That fall, there was a stray siamese cat hanging around the block. Our neighbor across the street fed his cats outdoors, which was attracting the stray, and he was threatening to shoot the stray, so we started leaving food out, which this cat then started eating. This was Max.

Max actually looked a lot like Sheba. They were both chocolate Siamese. A patch of white on Sheba’s chest indicated she may not have been purebred, and Max had that patch, plus splotches of white on her feet that may have shown some tortoiseshell. It took a while to get a good look at her though. The other thing she shared with Sheba was being easily spooked.

She must have been starving. She started plumping up so quickly we were afraid she was pregnant, so we started calling her Chloe. As we realized it was not kittens, but just finally having reliable access to food, we also though that a stray female would surely have had some kittens by then, so she must have been a boy, and that is when we came up with Max. Once we were able to handle her, she was clearly female, and had just been spayed before she was cut loose. She had a flea collar too, though it was getting too tight and needed to be cut off. Someone had owned her once, but we had no idea whom, or for how long (or how old she was), or what had happened. All we knew is that she was eating the food, and getting stuck on the roof.

It was during my temp assignment at Protection One. I remember it clearly because I remember going to K-Mart on my lunch break to buy a saw. Max would climb the cherry tree to get up on the roof, then not be able to get down, and she would start yowling. I would climb up, but she was still afraid to come near, so there was luring and grabbing and it did not take many rounds of this game before we decided that the tree needed to come down.

She would also climb the fence into the back yard, which was a concern because of the dogs, but it worked out. Sometimes when she was eating you could pet her, and she would not run away. One day, she walked into the house. Tradition says that man tamed all domestic animals except for the cat, which tamed itself. It seems plausible.

It was a very gradual process. She started spending more time inside, and eventually became indoors only. She took to the litterbox right away, so she must have been trained at some point, and remembered it.

That being said, her street time always showed. She never liked being picked up or being held. She liked being pet while she was eating, and then when she was sitting or lying down you could pet her for a little while, but she would suddenly turn and scratch or bite. Apparently this is not unheard of, but it was a first for us. I don’t think she meant to hurt us, because she would look surprised when she got us good and we made sounds of pain. Usually it was just a glancing blow, and there was usually a warning shot. Still sometimes there was blood, and you just had to accept that the pattern was purr-purr-purr-CHOMP!

About four years ago we got Jack, who wanted to chase her. This was funny, because they had tested him with cats at the kennel, and he didn’t pay any attention to them. I took him for a walk before we brought him home, and we saw a cat, and he completely ignored it. I have to assume now that he was bluffing.

Since Max mainly stayed in Julie and Maria’s room, we ended up sticking with that, and the dogs getting the rest of the house. It worked out. Max technically had less freedom, but it was amazing how much she managed to assert her will about where she wanted to be, and when, and how she would get there.

After being remarkably vigorous where no one believed his age (we got Jack when he was 10), age suddenly caught up with him a few months ago and he died. He was a fawn like Alexander had been. Age seemed to be catching up with Max too.

It wasn’t a lot. She lost some weight – down to nine pounds – and she had a patch of thin hair on her back. Her allergies got worse. (She had periodic bouts of hay fever, with sneezing and watery eyes.)

About three weeks ago, it escalated, and she got really thin, and we knew it was coming. She got down to five pounds, three ounces, and you could feel every bone in her body. She stopped protesting when we held her. We all started crying every time we held her, which I would not have expected her to have any patience with, but I guess she got mellow. It was time.

We all got to hold her Saturday. I got to hear her purr again. I couldn’t bear to put her in the cat carrier, so I wrapped her in a soft blanket, and she took the car ride very well. Normally she would have complained. She looked around, but she didn’t fight me. She didn’t fight anything. That was so not like her. That, more than anything, let us know it was time.

So, for the first time in seventeen years, Max is not around. Again, we don’t know how old she was. 17+, I guess. Part of grief is the initial loss, but there is also that cycle of forgetting and remembering. I walk past Julie’s room and I glance on the bed expecting to see Max, and she’s not there. I think I will go visit her in Maria’s room, and then no, she’s gone. The longer they have been in your life, the longer it takes to get used to the absence, so we’re going to be dealing with this for a while.

Again, it does not feel right to go looking for a cat. She found us. Actually, Geno and Jack, and a lot of the greyhounds, found us. Technically we did go looking for Jane, but somehow in doing so we stumbled upon the one dog who needs us most, and would probably have been labeled unadoptable if a third placement had failed, so okay, I guess that’s going to be our thing.

The dishes and the carrier have been put away for now. The food is going with Misty, for her cats. There’s some leftover litter too. We may return that, or give it to the shelter. I don’t know. I know there will be another cat. Julie and Maria still say we should move up to eight, so we have two cats each. That would require some rearranging. For now, there’s going to be a hole.

So that was our Max. She could not handle catnip, getting really freaked out. She found the red dot of the laser pointer interesting, but not interesting enough to chase. Ribbon or yarn was something else, though after losing her dignity she would pretend she had not. She would not use the Emery Cat, and she thought most traditional toys were stupid, unless they were strong with catnip, and then she would get fascinated, followed by stoned and paranoid, so that we had to stop letting her have them. And right up until her last few days, you could only pet her for a minute or two without getting bitten. Even then, she could still deliver a good snub. She was her own cat. She was also ours.