My Life and My Person
Max
My name is Max. This picture was taken in Michigan several years ago. Now I am older and have eaten many more bowls of crunchy cat food. I am still beautiful and orange, but now I am a bit older, wiser, and larger. I have destroyed the chair you see me in here, but I still like to play with purple (and pink) feathers.
I know many stories. Someday, I may tell you the story of Dai Yu and Xiao Xiong. It is a sad story, but it has a happy ending. Today, I will tell you a story about me.
I grew up on the street in Michigan. Sometimes people laugh when my person says that, I guess they think Michigan is not a rough place. But for a young cat, it is not easy to live outside, even in a nice college town in Michigan. I hurt my back leg as a kitten and although it healed, I still walk a little funny and have to keep it stretched out straight when I lie down. There was a man who fed me and other cats, but sometimes he did not remember to feed us. One of those times, I decided to look for other food. I found a nice doorway to an apartment where a woman lived with her daughter and their cats. The little girl who lived there named me Max, although the man who sometimes fed me called me �little orange guy�.
At night, I stayed outside the doorway of the apartment with the woman and the little girl and I cried a lot. One day, another woman came to visit. As she drove up and parked, I hid in the bushes and meowed my best �lost kitten� meows. I followed her and to my surprise she headed straight for �my� doorway. The woman whose doorway it was sat outside with this visitor. I sat in the visitor�s lap because she had some food, and let her feed me a boiled egg. I hate eggs, but I ate that one because I knew it might be my ticket.
She said she couldn�t take me because her husband was allergic to cats. But she really wanted to take me home because she had always had cats, and her cat from childhood had just died (she had left him with her parents when she moved to Michigan). She and the woman whose doorway it was asked many people if they would take me. I waited impatiently at the door for days. One night, it began snowing. The woman would not let me in because I tried to fight with her cats, but she fed me and built me a box to sleep in. I did not want to sleep in the box. I wanted to sleep inside! I stood on the box and looked in the window and bothered the cats who were nice and warm inside. Finally the woman called her friend and said �Come and get your cat!�
My person, her husband, and I moved to Connecticut a few years ago. That is another story. Now my person is no longer married. I hit him once in the back to show him who was boss, but I came to like him well enough. Still, he never was a cat person. A lesson for all of you cat people: Don�t marry someone who is not also a cat person�It will never last! There is a definite plus side, since now that no one is allergic to me, I can sleep where ever I want on the bed. My person is very happy to have me, even if I do like to step on her belly and drag myself across her face in the morning when she is just waking up. These days, we live with a young man who makes my person very happy. He is also a cat person, so I approve of this mate. He composed a song for me that he plays on his guitar. It is very exotic and soothing, sort of middle-eastern sounding. I sit and listen while he serenades me, pleased that he knows to pay homage to me, the beloved cat.
