The Aeschylus of Litter Boxes
My relationship with my cat Max is a study in power dynamics. He makes his superiority clear, while I point out that I’m not the one using a litter box.
Max retorted that his “advanced cerebral intelligence" means he solves his problems independently, while I pay a therapist to solve mine. He has a point. And a decent vocabulary. For a cat.
To my friends, I describe this gray-fur ball of mine as indifferent, snobby and moody. But Max regularly corrects me, in public, no less, saying he’s only “a tad mercurial and indefatigably peckish.” Damn, I thought I threw away his cat-thesaurus.
Still, we get along fine. That is, if it weren’t for his veterinary visits. Neither of us want to go. How does one get a cat into a carrier if they refuse to do so? Max acts like it’s a portal to hell as he splays his legs starfish and somehow grows ten times his size. This while embedding his claws into my flesh. I look like I lost a hotly contested wrestling match with a cactus.
So, I try in vain to avoid these appointments. Unfortunately, their office hounds me relentlessly. I get postcards showing a cat dressed like a doctor that read: “You feline great?” Then, there are the threatening voicemails: “Quit paw-crastinating and get Max here ASAP or we’ll have claw-enforcement arrest you meow!”
Okay, I exaggerate. A tad. Their message really was, “Max is overdue for his annual check up, please call us back at your convenience. Have a lovely day!”
Seriously, can’t you hear layers of the guilt and condemnation?
Max agreed with me. So we formed a plan: we’d go to his appointment, but no crate. He would sit in the passenger seat on the way to the animal hospital. As Max put it, “like any other dignified being.”
But then, things got worse. Much worse when the vet requested I bring a stool sample with us. I wish he meant mine. It took everything in me not to call back and say, “You've cat to be kitten me!”
When Max got wind of what was going down, things really went to the dogs. For two entire days I followed him around with a piece of old Tupperware. For two entire days, Max held it in. I could tell he spitefully enjoyed my Sisyphean task.
Thus why we entered the clinic empty-handed. They blamed me, while Max winked at me triumphantly. He grinned like a Cheshire Cat until the technician announced, “That’s okay, we’ll go in and retrieve a sample manually.” Why didn’t I think of that?
Simply put, our ride home was catastrophic. After all, a lubed-up cat who’s held a 48-hour grudge is an accident waiting to happen. And accidents did happen. Front seat, back seat, dashboard and floorboards. Let’s just say, I wasn’t “feline great” about the inside of my car.
To top it off, the vet’s Mamet-worthy lecture condemning Max’s free-range lifestyle lingered. I couldn’t un-hear that outdoor cats are responsible for the disappearance of billions of birds. Granted, Max just shrugged his furry shoulders and said, “Who, me?” as a feather fell out of his mouth.
Max loves being outside, you know, when he isn’t sitting on my keyboard or shredding my couch. But I tried to keep him inside. Over his incessant yowling, I yelled, “This is harder for me than it is for you!”
That’s when Max looked me straight in the eye and declared, “I am trapped in the inescapable net of ruin by my own want of sense!” Moved by his dramatic interpretation of Aeschylus, the Greek father of tragedy, I attached a bell to his collar and opened the front door.
A week later Max started losing his hair - on one side of his body. The vet diagnosed an anxiety disorder. I’d have one too, if I jangled with every step. Poor guy.
The two of us went home and bonded over our shared diagnosis. I asked Max if he wanted to go to therapy with me. He’s already called dibs on the front seat.