The Adventures of Maxwell Smart

Just over a month ago, we decided it'd be a good idea to get a new cat.

We wound up with a wide-eyed little tabby from Black Dog Rescue. (Actually, he's mostly white, but he has a couple big tabby colored spots.)

For the first few days, he was a lump - he didn't move much, didn't eat anything, and made next to no noise, although he would purr loudly whenever he was petted.

In an effort to get him to come out of his shell, I would pry him out of his kennel and sit for hours with that lump on my lap, petting him constantly while watching documentaries on the Internet.

After a couple days, he worked up the courage to stretch himself out over my legs and even swat at the zipper pulls on my sweater. I managed to get him to eat a few kibbles - you had to pull them out of his dish and scatter them right in front of him.

And then, one night as we worried about whether we'd be able to keep him - after all, at the rate he was going, he would starve himself to death - we found him sitting on top of his kennel, poised to pounce on a scrap of paper on the ground.

He played for nearly two hours that night, then ate out of his dish and fell asleep.

After that, he had no more problems with introversion. He decided to make friends with our older cat, a tabby named Sparks.

This wasn't fated to work out. The first time Sparks saw him curled up in his cage, her tail swelled to the size of a raccoon's and began thrashing back and forth. She made noises I'd never heard a cat make before, and while I'm not fluent in feline, I have a feeling the translation wasn't pleasant - or printable, for that matter.

Unfortunately for whatever chummy relationship they might have had, just as she began warming up to him (we're using a very, very loose definition of "warming up" here), he began warming up to her. He wanted to play, and his favorite game was "pounce". His pounces culminate in standing up on his hind legs and then lunging forward through the air towards his target. Sparks isn't a big fan.

He also likes to play with the dog. Unfortunately for his seven-monthold self, our dog is exceptionally tall. He has to climb up on the couch and swat her as she walks by. He'll follow her with his eyes, still swatting the air, as if to say "Wait! Come back! I almost got you where it really counted!"

She keeps walking.

It took us a while to settle on a name. I liked "Scooter". My brother liked "Steve". I tried "William", Chris insisted on "George". Eventually I came up with Maxwell (after Maxwell Smart, because that little cat is not nearly as sneaky as he'd like to think he is), and Chris agreed.

Max has a funny way of running. We all agree that there's something odd about his gait - Mom thinks he's bowlegged, I think they're just stiff - and so he makes an unmistakable thumping noise as he darts along. As he does so, he curls his tail forward so it's almost lying on his back. He likes to end with a pounce.

He's not a terribly typical cat.

Then again, we're not a terribly typical household, so he does seem to fit right in.