A New Low

I have a cat, Maxwell.  He’ll be 17 in July.  Maxwell, as you may recall, is in renal failure.  In the last few months, he’s started pissing outside his litter box—on the floor, on the bathmat, on plastic bags, on clothing that didn’t quite make it to the hamper, and most notably on the kitchen table.

This afternoon my animals and I were in a pile on the couch, as we are wont to be, a mélange of the limbs, heads, torsos, and tails of three species.  Maxwell stood up, shimmied backward a little bit, and peed directly on Redford’s face.  Redford only sort of noticed.