This is not Max; I don't think I have a single picture of that great cat. But it is a good likeness. It's from the American Longhair entry on petcyclopedia.com. At any rate, yesterday was National Cat Day and yesterday, today, and tomorrow are the days to focus on Glenn - so what better to write about than Glenn's magnificent cat, Max, named by stepbrothers after Maxwell Smart from Get Smart, the TV show. Max was pretty big - he probably weighed twenty pounds, and he looked like a tabby but had long silky hair and quite a personality.
I didn't meet Max until he was nine. I was, too. But he came into Glenn's life as a kitten when they already owned a German Shepherd named Duke. Duke and Max, according to Glenn, immediately bonded. They would nap together and Duke would even carry Max around on his back! My stepbrothers look upon this time as a very special time in their lives. Duke was much older, and I'm not sure how long he had been gone when Mama and I entered the Burne household. At least a few years, I think.
The only person Max would snuggle with was Glenn. In the evenings, when Glenn had his nightcap, Max would sit in his lap and Glenn would pet him and Max would purr away. He was aloof with everyone else. He would jump up on the couch with me when I watched TV in the den and always face away from me. He would let me pet him, but he didn't seem pleased about it, so mostly I just left him alone and observed.
Max was a mouser. He would spend all night outside. In the mornings, we would see him sitting on the window unit meowing at us. It looked hilarious! So he spent his days lounging around the house and his nights exploring the creek. He would often come outside when we were all out there, too. Once when I was playing basketball in the backyard, I noticed that a blue jay was bothering Max. It kept diving at him. I guess it had a nest nearby and didn't want a cat so close to his babies. The aloof Max just acted like he didn't notice and lay in wait. The blue jay got closer with each pass. Still, Max waited. When the bird finally got close enough, Max killed him with one blow. Fortunately, he didn't eat the bird. I couldn't be very sad about it. Max gave the guy chances to leave him alone, plus my granddaddy told me that Blue Jays were terrible for people's gardens.
One night when I was 10 or 11, Glenn, Mama, and I went to Eastland Mall. We had dinner at Morrison's Cafeteria and then went to look at the pet shop. They surprised me by telling me that we were going to get a puppy! Mama asked me which one I liked, but before I could answer, she said, with love in her eyes "Look at this one!" "Her ear flops down just the way Beau's did." I looked up at the dog she had her eye on - which was much bigger than the puppy I had picked out - but she was really cute and she was doing her best to play with a ball in the confines of her cage - flinging it about and scrambling after it. We got to hold her and that was it. Katy, a Keeshond, came into our lives. She was a fluffy, grey, medium-sized dog whose tail curled up around her back. We brought her home with us and she went bounding across the kitchen into the den. Katy stopped dead in her tracks as Max arched his back and hissed at her. That was quite a sight, I had never seen Max act that way before. He let her know in that moment who's turf she was on, and while the level of bonding Duke and Max had shared never existed between him and Katy, they were civil to each other.
One of Max's favorite games would be played while Mama cooked dinner. As you know, cooking dinner lures dogs to the kitchen. Our kitchen table was round with an eggplant-colored table cloth on it. You remember the eggplant/antique green 70's look, right? Max liked to jump up on a kitchen chair and hide behind the tablecloth. He would wait for Katy to walk by the table and then swipe at her tail. She would try to figure out what had happened, so she would turn around and walk past him again. This pleased Max no end. He looked very smug about the whole thing and it was a delight to watch for a kid.
As time went on, Max didn't like to go out as much. He killed Mama's ming tree and I noticed that he had a new hiding place in the closet of the den. One day, Glenn was walking through the den and asked me what that smell was. I said that I didn't know, but Max just came out of the closet. To Glenn's horror, he had apparently been using Glenn's National Geographic collection as a litter box for quite some time. More and more, he slept in the laundry room and greeted us at the door instead of the window.
After Mama and Glenn divorced, Glenn had to go out west to visit his family for two weeks. He paid one of Al's friends to feed Max, and left the back door to the laundry room open so Max could go in and out freely. At this time, Max was 17 years old. He was no longer able to mouse or kill a blue jay with one blow. Glenn returned from his trip to find Max limp in the driveway. He said that Max waited for him and purred in his arms one last time as he passed away. Al's friend came running up after seeing Glenn's truck drive by. He admitted that he forgot to feed Max. After a 17 year life, one of the world's greatest cats died of starvation. We were all devastated that he had passed in such a horrible fashion. Hopefully, Glenn and Max are reunited now in a comfortable chair sharing a snuggle while Glenn enjoys a Bourbon and a Cigar.
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