Life According to the Mice of Solebury

For those who don't know, I have two cats, Minerva and Max.  Both are adopted.  I adopted Minerva in 2001 from the ASPCA after my beloved cat Puka passed away.  Max was adopted in 2009 from the MSPCA in Massachusetts after I had my first apartment for a month and decided I needed a cat.  When you grow up with at least one cat around all the time, it can be hard to imagine life without one.

Max sitting in the window in Cambridge.

Prior to Max, all of the cats were indoor/outdoor.  They could come and go as they wanted, but generally spent most of the time indoors.  Until very recently, Max was indoor only.  Living in Boston and Cambridge in an apartment building isn't really a good place for an essentially free roaming cat.  However not long after I moved home in September, Max decided to venture outside.  The first time since moving home he was gone for a day and a half, which really scared me.  After that, it wasn't long before he was catching mice, bringing them in and playing with them.  Poor Max must be so bored if he is bringing in his own "toys" to play with.  

This morning I came downstairs and heard Max meowing.  He likes to talk, so I just figured this was his usual, "Hi Mom.  Good Morning.  How are you?"  Once I found him, I learned what the commotion was all about.  About a foot from him there was a ball of fur, a tightly curled up vole.  Max's response was almost like, "Look at that, he just wandered in.  Honestly, I have no idea."  Poor thing.  After Max tried to play with his new "friend", I went to the closet for a broom.  "Max, playing only works when the two participants are equally engaged, not when one is petrified of the other."  I was able to scoot the vole to the opened front front door, unfortunately, he ran under the closet door and Minerva saw him go under.  After that, Minerva crouched by the closet door for nearly 40 minutes just staring at the crack.  Poor thing.    

Max is meowing again...wonder what this means...

I'm trying to get my picture of Minerva, but it's not working very well.                  

The Hopeless Romantic

This post is not about me, but rather my cat Max.  I adopted Max from the MSPCA (the ASPCA, but in Massachusetts) last October.  

(Nov. '09)

Our studio faces Park Drive while the end of the hallway faces the rear of other buildings.  The hallway is essentially straight except for a "kink" about halfway down.  There is a female cat in the apartment at the far end of the hallway.  I have seen her, Fawn my roommate and good friend has seen her, but I doubt Max has.  Almost every time Fawn or I try to leave the studio Max runs out and sits outside the other apartment.  So far he hasn't tried to enter the elevator so whenever I have to go downstairs quickly to do laundry, check snail mail, or pick up delivery, I just leave my door open because that it easier than wrestling/coercing/startling him back into my studio.  (Of course when I leave the building I make sure he is in the studio and not roaming.)  Sometimes he is back in our studio by the time I return, but other times he is laying perfectly calm and content just outside his "girlfriend's" door.  Fawn and I refer to the cat down the hall as his girlfriend because by all accounts you would think they were friends, except for a tiny problem, they have never seen each other.  And so until they do, he will be a hopeless romantic.

(I have many more pictures of Max on my phone, and I will try to post them here as soon as I can figure it out ;)).