When I first met Mac he tried to escape. He was very tiny. We opened the door to the room filled with kittens and he ran out. He was headed straight for the door to the main room when Heather grabbed him and picked him up, leaving his little legs swinging. You could tell that if he could get out that main door, he would blow that pop stand and never be seen again. We brought him back to the room at Cat City where the new kittens all hang out and be adorable all day where he promptly perched himself on my shoulder, and eventually on my head. Mac had a way of sitting on a person and radiating an arrogance that was both infuriating and endearing. You could tell that Mac thought he was better than anyone in the room, and yet you wanted to pet him for it in hopes that he would give you a little more attention than anyone else.
Mac (who, I would like to point out, was named "licorice" at the shelter... worst name ever) was my first real pet. I grew up with animals... plenty of dogs and cats and the occasional chicken or horse, but they were all outdoor pets. They were Family Pets. They weren't mine. I didn't really care about them to be honest. I enjoyed that they were around, sure, but I hated taking care of them. Resented them for giving me more chores. Even the guinea pigs that I had for a short time. They lived in my room but I never considered them my pets. They were just these furry things that lived in my house and made it smell bad. Mac was different. He instantly fit it in in our home. We brought him home with the advice from the specialists in the back of our heads... give him time to adjust... he'll get used to things... he might be scared at first. The first thing Mac did when we brought him home was leave his cardboard crate, race around the house, and jump from the back of the couch to the bookshelf. He loved being up high, and would do everything he could to get there, including running up the back of my pants, up my shirt (or sometimes bare back) to my shoulder, where he would leap to the tallest shelf/cupboard he could find. It was amazing. It defied all I knew about cats. It was Parkour. It should have been our first sign that we were in over our heads. We brought him over to my sister's house for a bit of a cat play date. We let met out of the box and he did four things... all in a row. He ate my sister's cat's food. Scratched on their post. Used their litter box, and, when the resident cats came to investigate, Mac punched them in the face and took a nap. He was quick to prove himself to any other animal.
Mac was smart. Freakishly so. He only needed to see something once to know everything about it. Like that one time... He was sitting on the counter next to the lightswitch. I turned the lights on. Mac looked to me, looked back to the switch, and then reached head over and flipped the lights off with his mouth. Heather and I looked at each other a bit stunned, then laughed, and I turned the lights back on. Mac however, wasn't having it, and turned the lights off again. Rather than incur his wrath, we wisely decided to leave the lights off and go about our business in the dark. Mac quickly took over the house. We did what we could to hold him at bay, but there was no stopping him. We tried compressed air to dole out punishment. Didn't work. We tried a spray bottle of water. Didn't work either. We added lemon juice to the spray bottle. It only made him stronger. Then we tried vinegar water. First time I pulled the trigger with that in the spray bottle I accidently got him in the eye. He started to run away, but stopped, turned back around, and just stared me down with his one red rimmed and irritated eye. From then on the spray bottle would just have no effect. I was spray him and spray him and spray him and he was so incredibly stubborn that he would sit there and become soaked rather than do what I wanted him too.
He would also scratch on the only things we didn't want him too. It started with the bed, so we got that anti-cat-super-mattress-covering-tape when he promptly peeled off the bed and scratched behind it. Then he moved onto the bedroom door. He would scratch at it all night long. So we decided that the best thing to do would be to get one of those over the door knob scratching posts, foolishly thinking that if he had that, he wouldn't scratch the door.... All that scratching post did was give him a ladder so he could reach the door handle and open the bedroom door and again peel off the damn tape and scratch the bed. Like I said, unstoppable. In a desperate and hair brained attempt to stop the door scratching and thus bestow upon us a night of uninterrupted sleep we actually padded the door handle with duct tape and plastic bags, and wrapped the entire bedroom door in a blanket, sealing all edges with more duct tape. The only thing this achieved was to give Mac a chance to terrify us and break our spirits. Rather than do a Normal Cat thing Mac climbed to the top of the door, removed the duct tape from the top, climbed between the blanket and door and back to the floor... where he scratched on the door anyway.
He opened closets to get to his treats. He pulled those same treats out of their new hiding spots once we took them out of the closet. He would steal meat from your sandwich. He played fetch. He loved to sit in the fridge. Occasionally, he tried to kill us. I came out of the shower one day and Mac was sitting on the stove. He had turned the oven on, and was making it hotter and hotter, five degrees at a time, by hitting the buttons with his paw while he stared at me.
Despite the reign of terror Mac quickly worked his way into our family and our hearts. I've never really wanted a cat. I hate the cat hair. Almost as much as I hate glitter. Yet as time went on I cared less and less about the constant blanket of hair, and more about the thing that supplied it. I didn't want this to happen, and I didn't think it would. We got Mac for Heather. He was her birthday present, but every day I found myself loving him more and more. He joined me when I was happy and he was there for me when I was upset. I have never known a cat to have so much force of personality and life.
Mac is now eighteen months old and dying of cancer. His coat, which was always softer than I thought possible, is raggedy and coarse, it sticks out in all directions and he's stopped grooming himself. He doesn't eat anymore. Not even kibble, which was always his favorite food. He no longer drinks any water, regardless of how close to it we put him. He body is skinny and you can see the tumors on his sides. A few days ago his right eye became completely dilated and won't go back to normal, and he rubs that side of his face on the walls that he walks past. He moves slowly, and has an unsteady gait. His breathing is rough and his purr is broken and choppy. But he still purrs. He still cuddles with us and he still rubs his face on ours. But he is dying. Tomorrow we take him to our vet to have him put to sleep. I love him, and I will miss him.
And right now I would give anything to have just one more night with him scratching at the bedroom door.
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