Maxie - Number Six Of Seven

After we got Ginger, we went a year or two with just the five cats and as much as we all love Maxie perhaps we should have stayed that way for reasons I'll get to below.  I'd like to say I wasn't sure why M brought Maxie home, but actually I am sure and it's indirectly because of me.  I had went out of town for work to help a re-seller of ours upgrade one of their customers to a newer version of our software and install/configure some custom software they had us write.  The customer in question was a moderately sized pet store chain and while I was there I spent time at their HQ, but also at a couple of stores.  While at those stores I fell in love with a pair of young rescue kittens and really thought about bringing them home with me; however, the logistics just would not have worked out.  The shelter that had the kittens on display required a few too many hoops to be jumped through in the time I had and I was a good 5-6 hours (if not more) away from home and I didn't think that much time in the car would be good for them either.  However, when I did come home I talked about them quite a bit.  So when I had to go back the following week (which was unplanned), M took it upon herself to go find us another cat.  So when I got home the next week, viola, there was Maxie.

Now, per M, Maxie had been at the shelter a *LONG* time and they told her she just loved over cats.  Well I can't speak to the former, but as far as the latter - well that simply does not seem true.  Now maybe she was only around one or two cats before or maybe they were younger cats or whatever; but Maxie is a real loner and doesn't seem to care for any of the other cats.  Not that this is really a problem or anything on the surface, but it does have issues which I'll get to below.

I don't have a whole lot of pictures of Maxie, mostly because she doesn't tend to do "cute things", I suppose I need to rectify that, but the above is one that was taken shortly after we got her.

Now as I said above, she doesn't really like any other cats, but she just loves humans.  Of all of our cats, she's the one most likely to actually want to be picked up and held or to climb on your lap and lie down.  And she really doesn't care who is picking her up or holding her, just as long as it's somebody; although she does seem to prefer M over everyone and then probably me as a second choice.

I mentioned at the beginning that getting Maxie was perhaps a mistake.  That bears some explanation.  I'm grateful that we adopted her as I hate to see any cat in a shelter - even if it is a "no kill shelter", but I really think in a perfect world she would have went to a home where she could have been the only cat.  I think in that environment she would be nearly a perfect cat for someone.  Bringing her into our environment with the other cats has led to several issues, some funny, others no so funny.

The first issue we had was with Ginger of all possible cats.  We have one of those "L shaped" couches in the living room and Ginger liked to nap on the back of the one end of it.  Well Maxie decided she wanted to nap there to and suddenly we had a "poop war" up there.  Thankfully we always kept a blanket on there, but literally every day for a week or two one or the other would do their business on it.  Finally J coaxed Ginger to sleep elsewhere, and we thought we were done with these issues, but it turns out that was just the beginning.

Next things escalated into "pee wars".  I'm not saying the first five cats didn't on occasion decide that they weren't going to use a litter box, but it was honestly a very rare event.  Maxie on the other hand decided that anywhere in the house was her litter box whenever she felt like it and a couple of the other cats (most notably Boots) took exception to that and would retaliate.  The amount of time we spent cleaning things up - and that usually included carpet cleaning since they seemed to prefer carpeted areas - got to be way out of hand.  And before somebody says something, we actually have more litter boxes than we have cats, and they are cleaned multiple times per day.

The last issue has to do with something I referenced in some of the other cats posts - and that's the fact that if there is a spat among the cats Maxie always interjects herself into it.  At first I thought she just wanted to fight, but over the years I think it's more that she's trying to "break things up".  Unfortunately, sometimes a cat or two who is just an innocent bystander feels Maxie's wrath, but for the most part she acts as the "bouncer" so the speak.

Now, compared to the other cats I've written about it may appear that I'm down on Maxie or don't love her as much as I do them and neither of those could be farther from the truth.  Maxie is a wonderful cat and we love her dearly; I just think that in a perfect world that she'd be an "only cat" and get 100% of the love versus having to be initially one of six and now one of seven and have to share the love.  But regardless, we all do love her and would not trade her for anything.  And I'll have to rectify the picture situation with her.

- M