Troll Echos

This is the first part in a three part blog series dedicated to the life and death of Sasshi our cat.  To read the other parts, head over to Sasshi – Mourning and Recovery and Sasshi – Happier Times.

Our beloved cat Sasshi died a bit over a week ago, and this is the story of what happened, what didn’t happen, and what may have happened, but that I can do little more than guess badly about.  It is as unpleasant to remember as it is to write about, thus I expect it will be equally unpleasant to read about.  I apologize for that.  This effort was made as a form of closure where none is likely to ever truly exist, and to ensure the story be remembered when I desire it to be.  As a little bit of warning, this may get a little graphic since it details the last couple minutes of Sasshi’s life.

Leading up to the horrible events, Sasshi was happy, healthy seeming, purring in laps, enjoying a little left over pasta sauce with bits of Parmesan from dinner, and generally behaving the same way he had for the last seven and a half years of his life.  I had recently messed up my back very badly which resulted in three days away from work and remaining mostly horizontal during that time.  After dinner and some TV watching, I headed upstairs to my office to resume homework.

First, a little bit of setup about the scene.  Sasshi had followed me upstairs, as is certainly common, and was sitting in the open window looking around outside.  The window has a screen, opens sideways, and for the entire time Sasshi and I have lived at this residence, the iron and ironing board have been right next to the window.  The ironing board is an almost perfect match in height to the bottom of the window and provided a convenient path from the cat condo to the window when it was open.  I was working on an OpenGL program that represented a homework assignment for a college course (GP312) and I was struggling with it.  Thus, I was very focused upon the task at hand.

This part of the story takes place at around 10:10 PM on May 26, 2012 and while it may be a lot to read, it covers only about two minutes.  These two minutes may be the longest two minutes I’ve ever personally experienced, and oddly enough, perhaps the shortest.  Jarring my attention away from homework, there was a sudden crash behind me.  I spun around in my chair to discover both Sasshi and the iron on the floor.  My assumption at first glance was that Sasshi had attempted to exit the window, and merely grazed the iron in the process.  He was sitting on the floor a few feet from the iron, and in an odd position.  I figured the falling iron had scared him pretty badly and he was in a funny position preparing to lick his paws or legs, as would be common of almost any scared cat.  After about one second, I noticed that his back legs were not at sane angles, but were both more or less straight out.

Without even thinking about my recently damaged back, I scooped up the cat in an effort to comfort him.  Still hoping that he was just a bit freaked out by the loud noise of the iron hitting the floor near him.  Then the real horror started to set in.  Now in my arms, Sasshi’s legs remained in their weird directions and remained stiff and locked.  At around this time, my wife arrived at the door of the office, having run up the stairs when she heard the crash.  I believe I uttered something to the effect of “My cat.  His legs.” and put him back down on the floor as my wife turned on the spot and disappeared from my vision.  My assumption at the time was that the vision of the weirdly angled cat legs, and perhaps the horror on my face, had scared my wife away.

While I was in the office, now with the cat laying on the floor, my wife had run back downstairs again to grab a phone, and then out of the front door of the condo to simultaneously call 911 and start beating on the door of our next door neighbor in an attempt to get help.  Having gotten through to both 911 and the neighbor at about the same time, my wife tried to ask for help which the 911 dispatch obviously couldn’t provide since they don’t deal in pet emergencies.  After a moment of explaining herself, she ended up on the phone with the police.

During this time I was upstairs in the office desperately trying to figure out what was wrong with the cat.  There was no blood, no obvious damage, and nothing looked broken.  I was rubbing him and trying to find the source of his problem.  His eyes were wide open and his limbs had loosened up a bit, and genuine panic now starting to set in for me, I ran outside to where my was was standing on the phone and screamed for help.  Looking back on it, I really didn’t expect any, and I really didn’t want people to have heard my useless panicked screaming.  I almost immediately ran back upstairs and resumed my utterly non-veterinary attempts to diagnose Sasshi’s ailments.  I half picked him up, his head lolled dangerously to one side, he sort of seized and made a noise like he was trying to throw up, but didn’t succeed.  I placed him back in the position of laying on his side like he was a moment before.  I used the gagging action as a theory that somehow he could be choking on something and pried my way into his locked closed mouth with a finger and attempted to find something in the way.  My reward was nothing more than a saliva covered finger and a genuine sense of helplessness.

I once again resumed my useless attempts to rub him.  Pressing on his abdomen and seeking a way to make him “work” again in my mind, but failing rather miserably.  He was no longer moving at this point, but he really hadn’t moved much this whole time, and it began to soak in what had finally occurred.  Sasshi had died.  Realizing this, I wandered back downstairs to gather my wife from outside.  She was now done with her phone call to the police, having informed them that she didn’t need any help since it was for a pet and that the 911 dispatch had sent her to them in error.  I arrived and informed her not to bother, that Sasshi had died.  She later informed me that she figured I was just being dramatic since such a short amount of time had passed since the crash that drew her upstairs in the first place.  Our neighbor had arrived outside and we invited her in.

Now, with the two minutes from hell at a close, the timeline resumes a slightly more normal pace.  My wife began crying, I became numb about what I had just experienced, and I began to realize that my back hurt a lot again.  I began walking around attempting to rub on it and living in fear that I had injured it again only four days after having done it before.  I requested that my wife locate an old towel while I found and prepared a cardboard box.  It may not have been a real coffin, but it was pretty good for an impromptu kitty coffin.  We moved Sasshi onto the towel, and after a few minutes, into the box.  Since the whole thing was so sudden, and I was very concerned that it was all just some weird mistake, I only loosely placed the towel over Sasshi and I didn’t close the top of the box at all.  I freely admit this was nothing more than wishful thinking, but I figured if he somehow wasn’t dead, he should have every chance possible to recover without being stuck in a box tightly wrapped in a towel.

I thanked our neighbor for coming as I ushered her back out our front door.  She proclaimed that she didn’t really do anything.  I thanked her again anyway since the action wasn’t in having solved the problem, it was having been available for the attempt to help at after 10:00 PM.  With my wife crying over the kitty coffin, I called my mother to inform her what happened.  At almost the exact same time as I got through to my mother, the police arrived at our door.  My wife answered the door to let the police in, told them what happened, explained again that they weren’t needed, thanked them for coming, and then acknowledged their request to come in and check Sasshi’s vitals.  The officer was extremely nice, confirmed that in his opinion Sasshi was dead, apologized for our loss, and headed out.

Unable to properly concentrate on the phone call with the police present, I fear I likely just went silent for a couple of minutes.  Once they were gone, I resumed the conversation.  We were actually going to be visiting my mom for her birthday the very next day and I requested that we be allowed to bury Sasshi in her yard alongside the spots where the cats I grew up with were buried.  This request was because we weren’t going to bury Sasshi at our condo, and we won’t own the house we are in the process of buying for another couple months.  Mom agreed, expressed condolences, and agreed that we would see her tomorrow.

This story continues with Sasshi – Mourning and Recovery.