The Story of Maude

Lately, my mother has taken to calling or emailing me to tell crazy stories about my aunt's cat, Maude. Have I ever talked about Maude before? I don't think so, so let me give you some background.

Maude is (was) my cousin's cat. Maude is a Bad Kitty. My cousin and her boyfriend at the time found her as a stray in an alley in Chinatown, and decided to take her home before she ended up as somebody's dinner. She wasn't much more than a kitten at the time, and obviously had never been spayed, so they took her to the vet and got her fixed. A couple days later, my cousin came home from work to find Maude (and the floor of the apartment) covered in blood - she'd ripped out her stitches and was bleeding all over the place. So they took her back to the vet and got her restitched - which she proceeded to tear out again.

The trouble with Maude is that she's a revenge pooper. My cousin has moved apartments a couple times since she adopted Maude, and has on occasion come home to find feces smeared on the wall of her new apartment. Yes, smeared. Maude didn't just poop outside the litter box, she actually smeared it on the wall with her paws to express her displeasure. She's also been known to vomit on my cousin's brand new (expensive) boots, there was an incident where she fell in the toilet (and was blow-dried with a hair dryer for her efforts), and she has managed to completely terrorize my cousin's poor other cat.

My cousin has had Maude for several years now, and understandably is rather fed up with her. In fact, back before I got Chelsea, I had mentioned I wanted a cat, and my cousin said, "You want mine?" I, of course, replied, "Not with the stories you tell!" Finally, things came to a head when my cousin moved in with her fiance, who has a really dumb dog, and so the cats, rather unhappy with this situation, went to live with my aunt (which worked out well, really, because my aunt needed a pet or two to keep her company).

So, the other day, I'm talking to my mother on the phone, and she says (apropos of nothing), "Oh, did I tell you? Aunt Donna had to spray Maude with Pam."

"Pam?" I reply, completely befuddled. "Like... the cooking spray?"

"Yeah."

"Um. Why?"

"Because she was stuck in a jar."

O_O

Keep in mind, Maude has a history of such things. She once got her head stuck in a wine glass. (She also had a habit of tipping over full wine glasses, which did not go over well with my red-wine-drinking cousin and her white carpet.) This time, she'd managed to get her entire head, one leg, and a shoulder stuck in a large jar, and my aunt couldn't get her unstuck. Apparently, wetting her down with water didn't work, and she contemplated trying to break the jar, but she was afraid of hurting Maude with the glass. So she opted for the "grease her up" method and sprayed her with Pam (which worked, btw, in case anyone ever encounters this situation).

Then, the other day, my mother emailed me to tell me that one day, Aunt Donna was in the car on her way to work and Maude popped out of her tote bag, which of course scared her to death, and then she had to turn around and take her home.

Bad. Kitty.