Max

Max

This is a picture of my roommate’s three-legged cat named Max. He is an extremely sweet kitty and loves to be petted and kissed on the head. He has been a comfort to me as I recently moved in with my roommate and struggled with my disability.

Max is an orange and white cat, a bit on the small and thin side. He has yellow eyes, three legs, and is one of the friendliest feline’s you will ever meet.

I was taking pictures of Max outside in the backyard on a bright, sunny day in rural East Texas. It was difficult to take a photograph of him because he kept getting up and following me around. Whenever I would stop and take a picture, he would walk up to me and lay down on my foot. Nonetheless, I was thankfully able to get some good pictures of him sunning himself while looking at me.

In order to get this image of Max, I had to step back and call Max’s name. He would look around and then look at me, a little startled at first, I think. Then, after a slight pause in which he would stare at me and I would snap a picture of him with my phone, Max would get up and try to lay on my foot again. He would also rub himself on my legs and beg to be petted as if to say, “I worked hard for that picture, I deserve a pat on the head.”.

However, this was not the only photograph that I was able to take of Max. At one point, he went into the bushes and let me take pictures of him there. Those pictures were majestic, yet they did not have Max looking directly at the camera like this picture did. So, I discarded them.

I also took some pictures of Max laying down across from a dead rat (yummy kitty dinner!) in the yard. I was hoping to portray him as a mighty hunter. Unfortunately, he did not fit the description and looked relatively harmless in the pictures. He also kept getting up to come to me and, you guessed it, lay down on my foot. So I discarded those photographs as well.

I chose this particular image of Max because he is staring directly into the camera. His own sweet personality seems to shine on through. You can look deeply into his eyes and see that he is a sweetheart. His disability does not define who he is.

In this precise picture, Max seems to be asking, “Whatcha doin’? Can’t you see that I am cute?” And “Come on, I need your foot to rest my head on!” He also seems to convey an unseen feeling of strength, one in which he has overcome his missing leg. I do not know the full story as to how he lost his fourth leg, but I do know that his disability does not keep him from walking, running, and doing the tasks that a normal cat can accomplish. It certainly did not stop him from posing in front of the camera for a split second.

Max is a cat true to my heart, probably because I suffer from a disability too. This may be partly why I am attracted to him, besides his winning personality. He inspires me to go after my dreams and to not let my disability define who I am. After all, he has not let his missing leg keep him from being any less of a cat! Nor has it kept him from a good modeling job! You go Max!