Max died Tuesday night.

The day following my divorce from a twenty year marriage,
I bought a 60 acre place nestled between a large cattle ranch and a larger
military reservation.

June 21, 2000, set the stage for me to meet the most glorious cat I have
ever known.
And I've known a lot of cats.

It was an August Sunday in 2000.
I glanced out my bedroom window and we made eye contact.
Obviously a great intellect was making eye contact with me.
Love at first sight.

He ran like hell, the kitten with those eyes.
I thought, "There goes a nice snack for a coyote."

Wrong

I spied him from time to time.
In the Spring of 2001 he would sometimes peek in the window, curious.
A bowl of Cat Chow would be eaten.
Eventually he'd let me watch him eat from inside the house.

One Saturday in May he let me watch him eat through an open door.
Then he came over, curious, a risk-taker, I scratched the back of his head,
he melted.

We shared our hill in Texas until an infection took him last Tuesday night.

I read somewhere that "You have never been loved until you have been loved
by a cat.", it's true.

     The Cat and the Moon

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

    -- William Butler YeatsRegardsH.