Mexico Max—My Jungle Kitty

Aka Milagro gato

Hola Amigos! Our cat Max was a major player at Casa Maya. A fixture, too, in the neighborhood. He’d cat around for years, dropping in to say hello to the neighbors, probably nab a bite to eat, sit on their walls, watch iguanas and the world go by. He never missed our nightly cocktail hour under the palapa above the beach. While we toasted with cervezas, Max had a little sip of pool water nearby, chlorine or no, to join in the fun. Ode to Max.

When we moved to Mexico we took our three-month old cat with us—Max, born on the Fourth of July. We got him from San Francisco SPCA on Union Square where they'd set up a tent to unload kittens. A bevy of little charmers peered at us from a large cage—Max was the most bodacious of the bunch. Even when a two-alarm SF fire truck went roaring past, he didn't back away while I petted him through the wire.

He was the one.

He's been neutered and had his shots. That was his life story, the SPCA authority told us. So what was ours? Well, we explained, we were leaving for Mexico in a few weeks and wanted to take a cat with us. We were cat lovers and trusted the SPCA when looking for a kitty.

Going South? Maybe not

Not so fast! we were told. How could they be sure we'd provide a good life for the cat south of the border? In Mexico!

Wait a minute, was this really happening? Were we being questioned about our ability to provide a risk-free environment for our new kitty by the San Francisco SPCA? Apparently so. By this time we'd bonded with newly named Max and just thinking about him not in our lives was almost unbearable. Paul did some real fast-talking because within the next half hour we were trotting away with Mr. Max.

In looking back, Ms. SPCA may have had a leg to stand on. Max endured some unbelievable ordeals. Allow me to elaborate. He didn't get his nickname Miracle Cat, aka Milagro Gato, from our trusted Cancun vet por nada.

Off the grid

First off, in those days Quintana Roo was unsettled and downright wild as far as critters go. Much of Puerto Morelos, our pueblo, was a jungle and our house sat a mile from town. Back then we had very few neighbors and the mangroves across the sascab road were full of varmints: gray foxes, crocodiles, boa constrictors, monkeys, and coatimundi. Also added to the neighborhood combat list—beach dogs and stray cats. Non-neutered cats.

As life rolled along I came to realize Max was probably the lone neutered cat in all of Quintana Roo. Mexico strays still had their testosterone. I could tell by the midnight cat fights. The screeching would wake me. I’d jump out of bed, open the screen door, clap my hands a few times and yell. That usually worked and Max would haul his battered buns inside to sleep off his late night wake-up call, only to again realize he was indeed a stranger in a strange land.

By this time he was tri-lingual: English, Spanish and Mayan. Even with these language skills his Fourth of July birthday must have given him away. Every stray seemed to know he was gringo through and through. He'd cat around in those early days, and often when we went back to the US for a visit, I'd hear reports from the neighbors on our return—Max was over, or we saw Max in the mangroves.

We left him with caretakers who lived on the property when we were gone. Basically their only job was to feed him. I received a concerned email from a neighbor that said he'd lost all his hair and was as skinny as the pink panther. Obviously something was amiss.

Neighbor alert

She administered to him. We'd assumed the simple task of feeding Max was taking place but on our return home, we saw a raggedy cat with no fur from his mid-section to his tail. The caretaker said he wasn't eating. After checking his food supply—now Whiskas—what happened to the bags of pricey Science Diet we left?—I discovered his food was moldy.

We dragged him to the vet. Malnutrition had caused the hair loss and the ungas. Ung-what? It was a fungus, the vet explained. If we applied a topical cream it would go away.

From then on we asked the neighbor to check in on him when we were away. Although Max was usually an outdoor cat who used a flapper door for easy in and out privileges, for a while he shrank from any open door. We were flummoxed—he loved being outside. A few days later the gardener found a four-foot boa in the front yard. We assumed that was Max's reason for avoiding the great outdoors. We marveled at what he must have seen on those dark jungle nights, and how he managed to stay alive.

Milagro Gato

But there was no way he'd stay inside full time. Not his style. Early on he'd cavort inside and out of our now gated property, throwing caution to the wind as he ran across the road. But a few years later he started to avoid going out the gate as the road, now paved, got busier and busier. He hung back and restricted himself to a life within the walls of Casa Maya. His nine lives must have come knocking. Over the years we understood why our vet named him Milagro Gato. When Max made his first visit to the vet at the tender age of six, he'd earned that nickname.

"Why milagro gato? Miracle cat?" I'd asked.

"Oh," replied our savvy vet. "No cat can live in the jungle that long. He's un milagro."

Truer words were never spoken. Milagro gato.

Milagro gato lived a long life–till the ripe old age of 17, when he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. We miss him to this day.

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Backstory—Puerto Morelos sits within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites: Chichen Itza, Coba, Tulum and Ek Balam. By living in close proximity to this Maya wonderland we pyramid hopped on our days off from Alma Libre Libros, the bookstore we founded in 1997. Owning a bookstore made it easy to order every possible book I could find on the Maya and their culture, the pyramids, the archeologists who dug at these sites and the scholars who wrote about them, not to mention meeting archeologists, tour guides, and local Maya who popped into the store. I became a self-taught Mayaphile and eventually website publishers, Mexican newspapers and magazines, even guidebooks asked me to write for them about the Maya and Mexico. I’ll never stop being enthralled by the culture and history and glad there’s always new news emerging for me to report on right here in Mexico Soul. Please share this post if you know others interested in the Maya. Thank you!