The Tenth Good Thing About Max

In fall of 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, I brought Max to the vet because his behavior had suddenly changed. He was not even interested in treats! The vet ran all the lab tests possible and did not detect anything so we didn’t know what was wrong. I thought it might have been caused by a new food so we changed his diet back. A few weeks later I noticed a lump on his jaw. When the vet determined that the lump was an aggressive, inoperable cancer, we decided to take Max home to enjoy the time he had left. Over the next few weeks, Max was a good sport about taking painkillers and spent quality time sitting in windows and getting brushed and pet. I appreciated the time I got to spend with him until the lump got so big that he could no longer eat, and it was time to let him go. Though I had some challenging times with Max in the past, he had been my sweet buddy for the past few years, and it was hard to say goodbye to my Skippyjon Jones book kitty. 

The book The Tenth Good Thing About Barney by Judith Viorst is about a little boy who shares ten good things about his cat Barney at the cat’s funeral. Here are Ten Good Things About Max.

The first good thing about Max is that he survived. His mother abandoned him on my driveway on Mother’s Day 2010. I don’t know how long he lay there alone on the very hot cement, but he was barely moving when I picked him up. I didn’t want to keep him because I had never fostered newborn kittens before, but nobody else would take him. By the time somebody offered, we were all too attached to give him away. We kept him in a box with a heating pad and gave him formula. At first we had to use a dropper because the bottle that came with the formula was too big for his tiny mouth. He fit in the palm of my hand. I had to wipe his little bottom after every meal just like his mother would have, and I learned that mama cats are amazing because I could use cotton balls or paper towels- but they use their tongues. Sometimes I had to clean him in the sink if it was really bad. He didn’t like that. But… he survived.

The second good thing about Max is that he stopped spraying. He started when he was 5. He and his brother sprayed in the house and it was awful. After many months of trying calming collars & plugins, the vet prescribed kitty Prozac. First it was in edible treats that they refused to eat, then we tried liquid which they hated. The final time I brought them in because of the spraying, the vet was surprised I was still trying. She said that most people would have gotten rid of the cats by this point. But I had raised them from babies. Did she have any other options? She gave me the drugs in a cream. Every day I put on a glove and rubbed the cream into their ear. It helped a little. Eventually 3 things happened and the spraying completely stopped: Max stopped going outside, the house got renovated so all the flooring, walls & furniture that had been sprayed on was gone, and his brother went to live somewhere else. Max was a different cat when he wasn’t around his dominant brother.

The third good thing about Max was that every time I walked to the bedroom he ran ahead of me to jump onto the bathroom sink hoping to drink out of it. He had me well trained.

He liked drinking out of the kitchen sink, too.

The fourth good thing about Max is that while he drank out of the sink, he let me brush his fur. It became our daily ritual. I realized something was wrong with him when he stopped running into the bathroom and wanting to be brushed at the sink.

The fifth good thing about Max was that he was beautiful. 

The sixth good thing about Max was that he was oddly light & flexible. We think he was a Ragdoll breed because he was floppy, like he had no bones. It was super cute the way he would lay on the arm of the couch, or lay on his back all spread-eagle on the floor- his Pet Me Please pose. Max liked to be held like a baby. He barely weighed anything, but you had to be standing while you held him or he would want to get down. He was not a lap cat. 

Except at bedtime. The seventh good thing about Max is that he liked to sit on me at night in bed and let me pet him while he purred.

The eighth good thing about Max is that he was kind to all people and animals. If you were holding him and he didn’t like it, he never used his claws or teeth on you. While his brother fought the neighbor cats, Max hung out with them. He even got along with Chuck’s cat Bebe, who somehow tore the corner of his ear, though Chuck reminds me that I’ve never been able to prove that Bebe did it. 

The ninth good thing about Max was how he liked to eat with his paws. It was so dainty. If we left food or drinks out, he would put his paw in for a taste. He really liked coffee. Chuck learned that the hard way. This probably doesn’t seem like a good thing, but I loved that about him. It was quirky. It was Max. It is weird to me now, that I can set my coffee down anywhere and not have to keep it away from Max. 

At the end, the lump on his jaw made it hard to eat. He still would dip his paw in and try to lick it. But, he could no longer lick it well, or clean himself. I was reminded of his kittenhood, when we would make trips to the sink to clean him. Back to the beginning, at the end. 

I am grateful that I had a few weeks after the diagnosis, to spend time with him and say goodbye. It was hard to let him go. To know that I would never again pick him up and touch his soft fur, or see him jump up on the sink for a drink or scratch on his scratching post. The tenth good thing about Max is, I had ten years with him. And he is no longer suffering.