For the past couple of years Max has not been interested in letting me clip off the hard lumps of fur he develops. A year go I had a pet groomer come to the house. When she finished, he looked like a lion.A year goes by, his lumps start and then escalate till he is a mass of clumped fir, worse than before. I was trying to wait the virus out but gave up on that and had Judy come back with her van. We got him out there in one of her carriers, a hard-sided kind, he was pissed and meowing and making a fuss, but once his memory kicked he was all in, and purring and I think I heard him meow, “here, you missed this spot.” He came back even more shaven then before to the extent that he tooked tiny, not this big furry kitty he had been. Just his Head and neck and paws and manx tale have fur and the rest of him looks like a kitten. Judy says he’s the best behaved kitty she’s ever worked on. No, you can’t have him.

Tyler didn’t recognize him and did the territory thing. Judy said I should rub a little alcohol behind their ears and this would make them smell the same. I also gave them both some catnip. I guess it worked. Eventually they were friends again. He loves to come by and get petted now because he enjoys the feel of it. I have made a promise to brush him every day when his fur gets a little longer.

To recap. Max was rescued from a shelter by Dorothy, a friend of Ed’s with whom he volunteered for a while at the Welcome Center. She was elderly, got ill, Ed did some shopping for her and her daughter in law came from Indiana to care for her. Dorothy was terminal. She made her d.i.l. promise to find a good home for Max, who was then known as Toots, because Dorothy thought she had adopted a female. The d.i.l.’s husband said he didn’t want another cat, so we took him, intending to find him another home. We had Brunswick and Chewy that we thought were enough. Chewy’s instant reaction was to chase him down and Max hid out for three days and we couldn’t find him at all. One afternoon, I head a growl in the den and there he was, under the desk. Turns out he had been hiding in the space behind the computer, all cluttered with wires. He must have weighed 4 lbs. I brought him food and water and a kitty pan and kept him in the den for a couple of days and hung out with him at bed time for about an hour each night, talking to him and cuddling him.. He and Brunswick bonded on sight and started paying together and we said if Brunswick wants him, that’s good enough for us, so we kept him; To this day, if I pick him up, he struggles and complains, and then pokes his nose in my armpit and starts purring. Go figure.