Is Max possessed?

Max the cat, having behaved relatively normally over the Christmas period, has developed a nervous tic. Either that, or he is possessed by some evil feline spirit. It may just be attention seeking, because he will appear perfectly fine, snoozing on 'his' red sofa, until I go along and try to reclaim my patch (which I do very kindly and gently, without disrupting him in any way). Then his back leg will start to twitch up and down, and he erupts into a cacophony of strange miaows that don't seem to signify physical discomfort, rather a mental disorder of some kind (that's all we need - an insane cat). Even putting a hand within 30 cm of him evokes this violent and - quite honestly - freakish reaction. CG, who is not renowned for his love of cats, gets concerned by these attacks and asks Max what is wrong. The cat sticks his head forward, pupils dilated (think Puss in Boots from Shrek, and I realise that is not the first time I have referred to the film series; I must be more intellectual than I thought), tongue slightly out. You may wonder why we don't rush him to a vet. Firstly, I would feel really silly explaining all this in German to a German vet, based on my previous record of making a fool of myself in this country. Secondly, the attacks rarely last longer than ten minutes and all the rest of the time he displays absolutely no symptoms. So I can only deduce that he has the rare qualities of a cat medium. Somewhere, out there in feline purgatory, there's a Felix or an Albert or a Pussywillow or whoever, trying to contact their mortal friends. When I have finished all the things I vowed I would do this January (namely the tasks that accumulated during 2010) I will see about interpreting cat messages from beyond the grave. Don't hold your breath though. You know I am an arch-procrastinator.