Maui Rattray goes by several aliases: Meowie, Mau-Mau, Mowser, and the Mauler. Sometimes, if he feels so inclined, he will also answer to Al Capone.
Mowser’s criminal career began in June of 2023 when I, his grandmother, was in the hospital and he took advantage of the opportunity of lax supervision to embark on a campaign of depredation, fouling and destroying four handmade antique quilts plus a 15-foot-long antique carpet runner from Turkey. The crime spree has continued in fits and starts for three full years now. Mowser’s latest felony — dateline: East Hampton Incorporated Village, May 20, 2026 — is for no good or discernible reason climbing up onto the single cast-iron bed in the prettily wallpapered spare children’s bedroom that holds his kitty-litter box, to deposit diarrhea on the new mattress. The diarrhea soaked into the cushion-quilted mattress top, rendering it in one foul stroke nothing but a bulky item of garbage, bound for the dump.
Mau-Mau is, strictly speaking, my 16-year-old son’s cat. He came home to Edwards Lane from the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons some three and a half years ago, with the name Skittles. (Or was it Twix? Maybe it was Twix. He was part of a litter of long-haired beauties the ARF staff had dubbed with candy-bar monikers. Teddy named him Maui.) Mau-Mau has always been lavished with love. He is not lacking for attention. He will lie on his back like a beached, fat-bellied walrus, to allow you to comb the knots out of his soft, gossamer-gray belly fur. But watch out! In a trice he will be off to do his next terrible thing!
For the last three or four months, the suspect has been engaged in a campaign of cord chewing. He never did this as a kitten. He will chew on lamp cords, computer cords, telephone charger cords and the only way to stop him is to carry him away and lock him out of the room. No one knows why he chews cords. He is not lacking for toys. His tattered craft-sale mousie, which once held catnip but now only spills lambswool from its torn guts, is always underfoot, especially when you step bleary-eyed into the kitchen to make your morning coffee in bare feet.
Sometimes Meowie is accompanied on his rounds of dark deeds by his accomplice, a small, red dog with a white-grizzled face named Sweetpea, but more often than not this cat works alone. (When working in tandem, the gang of two is known around the house as the Heckle and Jeckle Gang. Sweetpea is no longer a fighter, or a biter, but despite her wizened visage and aging bones also carries a long rap sheet.) Maui also has known associations with other village animal residents of low character, including the buck known as the Reverend Buell who loiters on the corner of Buell Lane frightening pedestrians with his size and refusing to budge, and the gray squirrel known as Bagel Squirrel, who once stole a bagel from the lunch of a library patron next door and taunted passers-by by gnawing it ostentatiously — showily — in a tree. The Heckle and Jekyll Gang is theatrical and, if these vandals and ruffians wore human clothing, would go around with wide, flashy ties, wide pinstriped trousers, and wide lapels, like Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson from “Guys and Dolls.”
Mau-Mau has killed. He has killed a mole, a vole, and a mouse.
The Mowser is, by nature, an incredibly noisy cat; he meows loudly to make sure his humans are made aware of his bold demands. Noise-ordinance felony charge number one: Each morning between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m., Meowie commences his daily demands for breakfast by clawing at his grandmother’s bedroom door (by which I mean, my bedroom door) and meowing and meowing and meowing, relentlessly, waking me by intention. He expects breakfast before 5. He expects supper by 1 p.m.
Sanitary-code infraction number two: Maui has decided there is nowhere else he’d rather be than parked upon the large wood cutting board on the kitchen table, which heretofore had been used nightly in the preparation of human dinner. The cutting board is large enough to fit two cats, possibly two cats and a kitten, and it’s a blessing that the doggie accomplice is too rheumatic to climb up there. Mau-Mau puts his dirty paws all over the cutting board, licks the good (expensive) bread from Il Buco, and then sits down for hours, comfortably surveying his kitchen domain. His criminality increases with each passing month. Only since February has he decided that he would like to eat what you are eating — not just French anchovies, but English Stilton, pasta aglio e olio, or peaches and heavy cream. He makes a nuisance of himself the moment you are inattentive to your plate. Again, the only way to prevent this is to lock him out of the room.
The Mauler is affectionate to a degree that should be considered suspicious in a cat.
If you accidentally approach Meow-Meow too closely, while trying to chop bok choy on a dinner plate — because the cat has taken over the cutting board — he will confidently place his two front paws on your clavicles, look you in the eyes with his cold, cold, green orbs, and then, using his claws, climb right up onto your shoulders and pull himself around your neck and drape himself there like a fox-fur stole, humming and purring, his belly warming your nape. If you chance to bend down to pull a plate or bowl from the lower kitchen cabinet, beware! Maui may leap onto your back with all four claws extended, like a flying gymnast — Simone Biles — sticking the landing and then making himself comfortable, just lying right down on your back while you are bent over horizontal, providing him with a cozy, woolly-sweater cat-bed perch. (You try getting a large, over-affectionate possibly half-Persian cat off your back when he doesn’t want to budge. It’s harder than you think.)
The Meow-zer wants to be held — no, demands that he be held. He likes to be held belly up. He likes to be hoisted under the arms and held up into the air, like a baby at a baptism. He purrs loudest when you ruffle his fur in all directions, vigorously, as if you were polishing Aladdin’s lamp rather than caressing a parlor cat. He may act like a cherub at these moments, but do not be deceived. He’s no angel. Calling all cars! Calling all cars!