I'm going to need someone to figure out what goes on inside this little head:
Can I hire a cat translator? Or a feline mind reader? Something?
Little dude is baffles me in so many ways. Max is the sweetest cat we've ever had (Sadly, that's saying something. We're all Cat Lady Freakish up in this place and always have been). He's also the most defiant? Devious? Kerfluffling? I don't even know the word for what he is. I just know that when I walk into a room, he looks at me and waits. I imagine he's thinking, "Will she notice that I'm on the kitchen counter? Will she care? Do I care if she cares? Does that rule still exist? It does? OK, then." He is constantly doing things he knows he's not supposed to do and he only stops when you call him out on it. He instantly complies, but you have to tell him.
So he's like almost like a toddler except that I don't have to wipe his butt. That makes him better than a toddler, don't you think?
Anyway, I need to know what's going on in his head. Then perhaps I could figure out how it is that the kitten (he hasn't had his first birthday yet, I don't think) (I'm a bad Cat Lady who doesn't know the cats' birthdays.) who fears nothing found himself in a bit of a predicament.
Our cats are not allowed outside. Ever. Not at all. The others respect this fact. Actually, Ali is scared to death of the great outdoors, so I don't even have to tell her. She runs and hides any time a door opens around here because she doesn't want to know if something big and scary will come through the door. Powder wants to escape, but I can glare him right back inside. Max, however, just saunters right on out the door as if he was a shoplifter casually escaping Target with a bag full of loot.
Walk.
Walk.
Walk.
RUUUUNNNNN!
Every time.
He doesn't run because he's scared, though. That cat is not scared of anything. That was evident when we had a whole bunch of people over a few weeks ago. He casually lounged in the middle of the chaos the entire time. At one point, he was surrounded by a half dozen kids who were running and screaming as they had a foam sword fight and Max was all ::yawn:: "Hey, anyone want to pet me? I'm right here, just chillin'."
And he was just chillin' when I got home from work yesterday. Just sitting up on the window sill chillin'. I'm guessing that he broke out of prison that morning when Alexis went out the front door to get on the school bus. Her getting out the door in the morning always involves a lot of flying elbows, papers shuffling, backpacks falling, and ridiculous amounts of confusion. I could get Taz from Looney Toons in a jacket and out the door with less chaos. I don't know why. It just is.
So he must have escaped when Alexis opened the door and then spent the entire day outside.
Which is exactly how our neighbor's cats spend every day. They are outdoor cats who are confined to their yard by an electric fence, which obviously works really well considering the reason Max was sitting on the window sill was that the neighbor's cat was acting as his prison guard and not letting him move.
Here's what I know.
- Max escaped.
- The neighbor's cat must have been highly motivated to leave their yard. That's actually the first time I've seen it not in their yard.
- There was some sort of scuffle that knocked over some pumpkins.
That's it. That's all I know. Oh, wait! I also know that Max was scared out of his skull. He was shaking in terror when I pried him off of that window sill. The other cat was all, "Hello! That's mine! Put him down, please!" as I tossed Max into the house. The other cat had no intentions of leaving Max unattended and didn't care what I had to say about it.
There's a story there and I don't know what it is. I want to know what it is. Somebody send me a cat psychic, please.