Troll Echos

This is the third 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 – The Tragedy and Sasshi – Mourning and Recovery.

Finally, the blog about all of the fantastic things that made Sasshi, well, Sasshi.  This post is likely to feel a bit like a list because it actually mostly IS a list at its heart.  A list of happy memories, a list of comical interactions, and a list of specific memories.  Most are good, a couple may be “bad kitty” moments, but overall this is intended to be a record of what turned any old cat into our amazing cat.  This is also a very hard thing to write (and in fact a good deal harder than the other two posts were), not because it’s sad in nature, but because these happy memories drive the point home that he is now missing.  Many of these things occurred multiple times a day, or at least very regularly and now they don’t happen any more at all.

Sasshi’s Personality:  He almost always wanted to be near my wife and I.  Many cats I’ve known throughout my life tend to be rather aloof.  Not Sasshi.  I often described him as having a “Black Belt in Lap-Fu.”  This doesn’t mean I needed to push him off my lap all the time, it just meant he really knew how to keep his people around him.  When he wasn’t in a lap he spent a lot of time either on the second couch in the living room or in his cat condo in my office.  One of his most endearing personality traits was his willingness to purr.  Almost universally when he arrived at our side he would already be purring happily.  Before we’d even touched him you could hear his little purr engine rumbling away.

Rules of Attention:  Many cats have many different “rules” about how they like their attention delivered.  For example, many cats hate being rubbed in the opposite direction their hair grows, others won’t let you anywhere near their stomach when petting them, still others consider their tail to be completely off limits.  Sasshi had only one thing he didn’t like at all.  He was generally unhappy with being held in someone’s arms with his back toward the floor the way you might cradle a baby.  He would tolerate it for a moment because he liked attention, but that moment was short and then he’d get annoyed and squirmy until you put him down.  Everything else, including hours of petting his tummy, rubbing his tail, petting him against the grain, even the occasional efforts of my wife to try to make it look like he had a mohawk by rubbing the hair on his head backwards, were all totally fine by him.  He had a light brown section of hair on his otherwise white chin that my wife referred to as his goatee and he love having that rubbed on almost more than anything else.  He would tilt his head back to precarious angles all just so it would be easier for you to rub under his chin.

Green Bunny:  As previously mentioned his favorite object in the world was his green bunny.  It was a small toy with a squeeker inside.  The squeaker didn’t make any difference to Sasshi at all.  Over the years I tried repeatedly to find a replacement for it in fear that it would one day be utterly worn out.  Nothing did the trick for Sasshi.  It wasn’t the color, it wasn’t the shape, it wasn’t the texture, even the presence of catnip in other toys couldn’t sway him, it was simply the irreplaceable object itself.  He carried it in his mouth almost everywhere he went and often delivered it to my wife and I to the praise of “Thank you for bringing your green bunny.”  When he wasn’t lugging it around he appeared to like to just have it near him.  This earned it the nickname “Sasshi’s security bunny.”  As if by magic, he always knew right where it was even if it was moved by me or my wife.  Regularly at night he would meow for no obvious reason in the office near our bedroom.  Shortly afterwards we would often hear him trotting down the stairs and then we’d hear muffled meows.  These comical meows were a sure sign that he had found his bunny, picked it up, and was telling us he found it.  The next step was of course to carry it back upstairs and deposit it in our bedroom before jumping up onto the bed with us for the night.

In the Bathroom:  Nearly every time anyone went to the bathroom, Sasshi wanted to be there too.  This started, I believe, with a pattern he established as a very young kitten.  Very early in his life, he realized that joining me in the bathroom resulted in effectively undivided attention for him.  When he was tiny, he would climb into my pants as they sat around my ankles (sorry for the mental picture).  Once there he would purr in the safe confines created by the walls of my pants.  Occasionally even as a full grown 19lb cat he would attempt to relive his youth only to discover he had absolutely no hope of fitting in my pants.  This shared bathroom time later resulted in a routine announcement to the cat that I was heading to the bathroom, the results of which were almost always him following me there.  His enjoyment in the bathroom was not limited to only toilet time.  He also regularly waited on the counter or toilet for the occupant of the shower to be done.  He waited on the back of the toilet for someone to realize he was there in an attempt to get someone to rub his head.  He also had a great time completely scrambling up the bath mats by either skidding to a stop on them or starting into a full on run while on them.  In either case the result was bath mats all folded up by the heater and occasionally a cat toy would be present as an explanation of what had happened.

Daily Routines:  Since Sasshi was always around, and generally followed us where ever we went, there were loads of opportunities to create daily patterns.  Waking up each morning, I almost always found him laying next to me.  Once he realized either me or my wife were awake he would often move into a better position for getting attention.  When putting on shoes to go head out somewhere, he was always there nuzzling the railing of the stairs and purring while waiting for a little extra attention.  He would regularly lead me to his food bowl where he would grab a quick snack and I would confirm there was enough food in the bowl.  At no point in his life that I know of did he ever go even remotely hungry, but he always liked to make sure he had enough food available, especially when his people were heading out of the house.

Vacation Related:  When packing for a trip we often got the impression that Sasshi knew exactly what was going on.  We have turned our backs long enough to discover him sitting in the suitcase.  This could certainly be a standard cat in a box type thing, but who can be sure he wasn’t thinking this was the way to be brought along with us.  To further back up this theory, on a separate round of packing, we found that he had placed his green bunny into the suitcase.  We figured that meant he considered himself packed and ready to go.  Universally when we returned from a trip he would purr louder, purr longer, and wouldn’t stop being in direct physical contact with one or the other of us (though usually both if he could figure out how to sit to make it happen) for at least twenty-four straight hours.  This included following us from room to room, following us into bed, and many position changes to optimize how close he was to us on the couch.  I always felt bad leaving him behind, but based on his passionate hatred of the cat carrier, even if I felt like it would be a good idea to bring him along for something local, I knew it would really be a terrible idea.

Food Related:  Sasshi was a purely hard cat food powered animal.  Aside from an occasional cat treat, or a small nibble of some sort of our food, or perhaps a plate to lick after dinner, he ate very little else.  Even things you would expect a cat to like such as bits of fish, scraps of chicken, nibbles of beef, or other random foods carnivorous animals would enjoy, really did nothing for him.  He would enjoy the occasional tidbit, but more often than not he would wander away having left whatever it was sitting there uneaten.  As with all things, there are a couple of notable exceptions to everything.  Sasshi loved yogurt more than anything else in the world.  I’m convinced that if I had ever given him a cup of yogurt of his own it would be entirely consumed.  In general he never begged for anything food related at all.  He would sit on one of the kitchen table chairs like he was a person and silently watch.  He was wired to throw all of his normal patterns out the window for yogurt though.  He would meow for it, he would try to put his face into the cup you were still in the middle of eating, and he would try to climb on you.  Being rather intelligent however, a simple “Hang on bud, you’ll get it when I’m done.” and a gentle nudge away from me would usually result in him sitting on the floor staring at me and waiting.  He was very patient for this, but you could see him getting excited when I started to scrape the edges of the cup with the spoon.  Oddly enough, he also liked to have a small nibble of a pancake sometimes too.

Bedtime:  Aside from sleeping with me and my wife every single night, he also seemed to dislike being cold.  Ever since he was just a kitten, he loved sleeping under the covers pressed up against me.  Based on this happening primarily during the colder months, my assumption was he wanted the warmth, but based on the amount of purring, I think he also just liked feeling cozy next to me.  The part that was amusing about this to me was that he was either lazy, polite, or just plain dumb about how to end up under the covers.  Cat’s have pointy heads (well most of them do anyway) and that makes them quite good at nosing their way under things.  This could be a blanket laid on the couch, a comforter folded up on the floor, or even as a tool to open doors.  The use of this “tool” to get under the covers with me was apparently too crude for Sasshi.  Instead he would walk up next to my head and gently poke at the covers with a paw.  If that didn’t work he had been known to do other things like poking my head, sniffing my face while purring (which was an amazing way to tickle someone into doing your bidding with your whiskers) or walking on me until I was ready to lift the covers for him.  Once the covers were lifted, he knew exactly how to do the rest.  He would walk in, do a 180, make like he was going to walk back out and then stop before he did.  He would lay down with his paws on my arm and purr and usually fall asleep.  Eventually he would decide he’d had enough, or perhaps overheated, and would wander out of the covers and go somewhere else.

Wildlife:  As an indoor cat, he was never allowed outside, and in fact, if left near an open door demonstrated almost no desire to go outside besides simple curiosity.  There were however lots of super interesting things outside to watch excitedly through the sliding glass door.  Thing that could push his buttons ranged from squirrels and birds to local outdoor cats and even leaves caught in the wind.  When things were interesting to the point where he couldn’t stand it he would “chitch”.  This noise was almost like an abbreviated meow, but where his mouth does little more than twitch.  He would be all hunkered down like he was just itching to pounce on whatever it was if he got the chance and his tail would swing back and forth aggressively.  No matter where he was in the house, when the glass sliding door was opened he would be there to check out the outside, now with smells through the screen door.

This post took an astounding 6+ months to write.  Not because it was super long (which it actually was I suppose), but because I regularly found myself unable to continue to write about Sasshi without being very sad.  Even on my final attempt to finish it rereading it to see what I still needed to add to the list caused me to almost immediately begin to cry.  Not especially manly of me I suppose, but he was an amazing cat and I miss him terribly and all these wonderful things he did all the time really drive that point home.

This is the second 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 – The Tragedy and Sasshi – Happier Times.

With Sasshi resting in peace in his kitty coffin in the office, the full weight of the events began to chip away at my previous numbness.  A weird desire to avoid the office entirely set in pretty deeply.  I figure this wasn’t just that it was the “scene of the crime”, but that it was also where the most solid and real reminder that our cat was dead sat.  My desire to avoid the office was superseded several times before the night was over since it is the place where my cell phone sat on its charger, and a surprising list of individual things kept coming up that sent me once again in there to brave the room.  This invariably left me staring at the box with Sasshi in it as I passed by, and on several occasions checking in on his body repeatedly trying to make sure he was really dead and that this was not in fact just some terrible dream I couldn’t wake from.

With a box of tissues in hand and my wife still crying, we attempted to retire to bed.  My brain was repeatedly reliving the horror without any way to make it stop and before long I too found myself uncontrollably crying.  Any attempts I made to remain stable to help console my wife were undermined by flashes of the event and an on-going series of attempts to figure out what had actually happened, all while attempting to even process that Sasshi was gone.  In other words, I was a mess.  The best we could do for each other was to be there and to offer each other fresh tissues as each previous one retired to the pile of damp ones.  I believe we actually fell asleep at around 3:00 AM, and slept badly until just before 6:00 AM.  My sleep was dreamless but filled with a sense of absence.

Immediately upon awaking I was once again reliving the previous night.  I got out of bed and cautiously approached the office once more.  I checked Sasshi again, and this time he felt stiff and cold.  I turned from the box and began to cry again as though I had never stopped the night before.  I grabbed his green bunny from his cat condo and placed it into the box with him.  I felt it was his favorite thing in the whole world and it really should be with him despite the various thoughts of Egyptian burials this stirred.  Before leaving the office, I grabbed the mug that had some ice cream in it the night before and that I was enjoying when Sasshi died.  It was never finished.

Once in the kitchen to clean up the mug, I found myself surrounded by reminders.  For example, Sasshi’s food bowl was no longer on the floor, but instead sat on the counter.  I decided to clean it up one final time and began to feel like someone had punched me in the gut.  Sasshi was gone, and I realized I genuinely had no idea what had really happened.  Thus began the process of remembering the event on purpose to try to uncover new additional clues I may have missed.

While I was busily trying to pretend I was some sort of crime scene investigator, the truth began to set in.  I had no clue what had happened.  I had my back to the entire event because I was programming homework when it occurred.  Worse than that self-accusations began to accumulate.  “What if I had never opened the window in the first place?”  Would he not have died?  “What if I hadn’t opened the blinds too?”  Would he not have bothered with the window at all?  To my pile of theories, my wife added “What if the iron wasn’t there?”  At this time, the prevailing theory was that Sasshi had jumped out of the window, clipped the iron, and as if by magic it perfectly landed on him and broke his neck.  The odds of this seem so low as to be impossible.  It could have landed at a different angle and done almost no damage.  It could have hit a leg and broken that instead.  How did he get out ahead of it with it coming down behind him?  It just didn’t seem right, but for the time, it was the best we had to go on.  How else could Sasshi have died without obvious cause?  We weren’t sure, but I was hopeful I might figure it out somehow.

Later in the morning, at around 8:00 AM, we headed over to my mom’s house with Sasshi in his kitty coffin buckled into my back seat.  I truly felt like a hearse driver, but I rather doubt most hearse drivers cry during the funeral procession.  It was the one and only trip I made with Sasshi in my car where he was quiet.  Having arrived at my mom’s house, we nibbled some food, told the story, and sat around either in a daze or crying for most of the morning.  Eventually it was time to bury Sasshi.  His last moments to suddenly pop up and say “I was just kidding” had arrived, and he missed his chance.

I cried less watching Sasshi being buried than I thought I would.  I assume the mild numbness that had returned was being caused by nearly no sleep, and the constant mental anguish involved in reliving those fateful two minutes over and over.  I placed with him his green bunny, leopard print mouse, and the elastic string he loved to play with that hung from his cat condo.  These represented three of about forty different toys that were his over the years, but they were only three he ever played with.  I rubbed him one last time and folded the towel over his body.  Like any story involving funerals, there was the overall feeling that he could just be sleeping.  Unfortunately he wasn’t.

Over the next few days, I told the story to friends and fellow cat lovers and I researched cat diseases.  The iron hitting the floor with the cat seemed wrong, which really only left various diseases and fatal attacks and I was determined to find it through research using the only information I had.  His condition during the event.  I dug my way through blog posts, discussion forums, a site devoted to cat diseases and their symptoms, and I read countless sad stories and horror stories.  Nothing lined up properly.  I’m pretty sure cats are some sort of alien super life form.  Cats almost can’t have heart attacks.  Cats can have strokes but they very rarely kill them, and oddly enough, many recover on their own.  They can have seizures, but generally recover on their own from those too.

I was running out of hope for closure.  The closure I sought was some clue about what had happened.  Something that would help me to believe I had done at least some things right in my failed attempts to save him.  Something that would grant me understanding about why I had a perfectly happy cat, and two minutes later he was dead.  Anything at all.  In the end, I had to make the conscious realization that there was no way to know.  Sasshi had died, had been happy before it happened, and frankly didn’t have time to suffer.  He was buried at peace and certainly wasn’t going to be unearthed for an expensive autopsy that may not answer any questions anyway.  I was forced to accept closure in the simple fact that I will never know what happened.  An unpleasant truth, but it was the best I had.

As the week since Sasshi’s death advanced, I found myself telling people more about the gaping hole left in my heart and in my everyday life, and less about how he died.  I also discovered that it was possible to go from 100% fine to crying like Niagara in literally one second flat.  This provided new information about how children seemed to be capable of this feat.  I had always sort of figured they were faking it to get what they wanted out of their parents and that turning on genuine crying like that wasn’t really possible.  How wrong I was.

Every day I feel a little better and the cat that acted as a shadow is simply missing but I get more used to the loss and I’m starting to be able to at least tolerate the pain without breaking down.  Well, most of the time anyway.

This story continues with Sasshi – Happier Times.

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.