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green_dreams) wrote2024-05-08 05:13 pm
World's Absolutely Greatest Rutabaga
Angus Maximus, sometime called "Goose"
30/8/2009 (approx.) - 8/5/2024
Angus died today on Wednesday. (I initially posted this on May 13, and have backdated it will backdate this in a few days, I think.) We had a little time to realize that it was coming, but not enough.
We had a lot of time with him before that, but not enough.
We said he had the heart of a lion, the brains of a carrot, and the hunting instincts of a mildly athletic rutabaga. A rutabaga, of course, is a kind of tiger; nothing else would do for such a Mighty Hunter.
One of the first things the friends who found him ever said about him was that "He purred and snuggled and wanted nothing more than to be loved and petted." And that really was him. I suspect they would have kept him if one of their own cats had not put his foot down, and he would have had a lovely life, but we would have missed out.
We brought him home from Montreal and named him Angus Maximus. He started out skinny and was extremely food-motivated for pretty much his entire life. He grew a ridiculous amount of floof and loved being brushed.
He was friendly and brave and kind. When he heard another cat, he wanted to meet them. When he heard another cat being upset he would be extremely concerned and try to see if he needed to help. When Piper wanted to play with another cat and said other cat grumbled, he would charge up to Piper and... well, honestly, he would look a bit baffled at her being so much bigger, but he was clearly trying to figure out next steps, not backing down. He went to town on Sam once when Sam was going after Henderson. Even his humans were not excused; when Lucy complained that I was clipping her claws, he would come over and stare at me to make sure that things were not getting out of hand.
(Speaking of claws, we initially thought he'd had all four paws declawed, because his reaction on first meeting Piper was to fall out of John's arms, and completely fail to use his claws while scrambling to catch himself. He was that kind of sweetheart.)
Note that this did not prevent him from occasionally ringing the other cats like a dinner bell when he was hungry. He'd pick a small squabble, and as soon as one of us stood up, he would chirp happily and trot off towards the kitchen with his tail stuck straight up. He squirmished with Sam a lot, and regularly broke his collar off. We sometimes had trouble finding it, and when that was the case Angus would bring it back to us in triumph, singing (with his mouth full of jingling collar) about how he had defeated the enemy and was truly the mightiest of hunters and we could praise him now.
He was also bossy. There was a lot of deciding he was going to groom the other cats now. And he was not shy about demanding attention; he used to regularly come and yell at me because I hadn't gone to bed yet or hadn't sat in his favourite chair (and did I expect him to be content sitting in that chair without there being a lap in it? like an animal?).
And he snuggled. He purred with his whole heart and he snuggled like it was his reason for being.
He gave us fourteen years of fluff, cuddles, curiousity, and love. I miss him so much.
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