09 April 2016

Nine Years, Nine Lives--With Max

It's hard to believe that I was once nine years old.

It's also hard to believe that, not so long ago, really, nine years seemed like a geologic age.

Now it goes by in the blink of an eye.  Periods of five and ten years start to blend with each other.  I realized as much when I made an offhand remark that something looked "Soo '80's."  

The person to whom I made the remark corrected me:  "More like early '90's".  After thinking for a moment, he said, "The '80's, the '90's--at our age, the decades run together."

That I can think of nine years as, in essence, a decade, says something about my perception of time.  I think I've also reached a point where any amount of time more than fifteen years becomes twenty.

Anyway...today, the 9th marks nine years of a relationship--with someone who, proverbially, has nine lives.




I am talking about none other than Max.  

Whenever I come home from a bike ride, he circles my wheels and my feet.  I feed him and, as soon as he's sated, he climbs onto my lap, whether I'm drinking, eating, reading or just spacing out.  

It still amazes me that such a wonderful cat came my way--and I didn't pay, or really do, anything to get him. In an earlier post, I told the story of how he came into my life. Whatever I've spent on him--which, really, isn't much--has been a pittance.  After all, when he climbs and walks on me, I feel as relaxed as I do after a good massage.  And when I'm tired or feeling blue, I talk to him and feel as if I've had a nice therapy sessions.

In  brief, he's a stress-reliever.  Of course, I don't tell him that:  I don't want to reduce him to mere usefulness.  I simply love having him around, and I hope he's around for some more years.  He's fifteen now, according to the vet who examined him just before I took him in.  In the scheme of things, that might just be the blink of an eye.  But it is a relationship, it is a love--which is to say, it is a life.

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