About Max

Max is our only purchased pet, a nearly 7 year old Maine coon cat who still had a rough start even though he was not from a shelter. He was the runt of his litter and I don't think that had much impact because when he came to us he was still a larger than your normal housecat kitten. But he had an undescended testes and rather than a simple procedure, he had to have what amounts to abdominal surgery to locate and remove the testes. Then after he recovered from that his big dog friend, who really is his closest friend in the animal house, stepped on him and ruptured a disc in his lower spine causing great pain and initially causing some partial and temporary paralysis of his back legs.

But he recovered from both of those medical problems and grew up very feisty. Are the events connected to his thuggish personality--I don't know. I have never had a cooncat before so don't know if he is representative or not. He loves me, follows me around, purrs when I am around; but he still won't let me do any grooming or at least not willingly. He doesn't seem to do much self grooming except for his paws which he cleans very carefully every morning in the dogs' water bowl.

We had Max groomed a couple of times in Utah at two different places. Both places refused to accept him back so at that point we asked our vet if he could at least shave him. Since the vet also did tooth cleaning he shaved Max when he was out like a light, but anesthesia really isn't the answer to a bad hair day. So today when Max met his new veterinarian for the first time, and she said that he was very matted, we explained the issues. He is aggressive anyway, he hates to have his back touched where the rupture occurred, and so on. She prescribed some gabapentin to be given two hours before any grooming and sent us on our way.

I looked online for a mobile cat groomer since I knew that Max would already be in distress if he had to ride in a crate anywhere. I found one near us and left a message. Lo and behold, she had time this afternoon but the problem is that she said she would be at our place around 3 and the instructions on the gabapentin said to allow two hours lead time. Well of course the groomer, like nearly everyone in the world except me, was seriously late. So even though Max was clearly mellow by three o'clock but far less mellow at quarter till five.

Bottom line is that Max got shaved today. He wasn't as bad as he could have been and no blood was drawn, either human or cat. If I had known that he would not allow much grooming (though even there he is better than at two years old), I would not have gotten him.

If anyone wants to see my nearly 19 pound monster, let me know and we can take some pics.