The awful thing that happened last Friday (or RIP Oscar)
It was approximately 6:00am and I realized that I was awake, and awake because I had heard a funny sound.
A few minutes later I heard the sound again and it sounded vaguely familiar. Kind of like the sound that your nose sometimes makes after you've blown it. You know the sound - kind of squeaky - like your nostrils have somehow stuck together at the end of the blow. I instantly felt sorry for Julia - I was thinking she hadn't taken her allergy medicine and was paying for it as she woke.
Then I heard it again...this time it sounded like one of my cats crying out (well, kind of crying out). It was disturbing enough that I jumped up to see what was going on. Was this Julia, or was it a cat? And if it was a cat, which one was it?
As I flew down the hall, I noticed that Julia was sitting up in her bed. I stopped at her door and asked if she was ok. She quickly responded that she was, but that something was wrong with Oscar.
As I rounded the bed, I could see him crouching in the floor. I instantly thought he was dead. Then he looked up at me, with the wildest look in his eyes, and let out the sound again. At this point I also noticed that his tongue was kind of thick looking and starting to turn blue as it fell out of the side of his mouth. My thought instantly took me to thinking he was choking on a fur ball. Having worked for a VET in college, office practices and an old Red Cross class took me over as I grabbed him and began probing his throat to see if I could dislodge the hairball that I knew he must be choking on. Imagine my surprise when I couldn't find anything.
I kept on trying to find a blockage, feverishly probing my fingers down his throat. I then began giving him my version of a feline Heimlich maneuver followed by some mouth to mouth and chest compressions. For a split second I just knew I was going to save him. Why else would I have thought to do all of this? My children watched me acting like a fiend with wide eyes. I was calling to Oscar, begging him to stay with us. I wasn't admitting to myself that he had just died in my hands. But he really was gone.
I began crying, all the while checking to make sure that he hadn't miraculously started breathing again. He was like a warm little rag doll in my hands. Felix looked on with a spooked expression. I was sobbing in the floor. Legare was sobbing with me. Julia and Bryan both seemed bewildered and unbelieving of what they had just witnessed.
I then placed my sweet Oscar into a used USPS "Priority Mail" box and kept checking to make sure he wasn't really breathing. Then, my sweet husband took my shell shocked children to school (I sent teachers an email about the mornings happenings) and he came back home to gather up Oscar and take him to the farm to bury him. Oscar now lies in peace in "Pet Row" next to all of the other pets...Drake, Poogan, Calhi, Deacon, and a friends dog whose name I don't recall.
I haven't dwelt too much on it - I still have a cat and two other dogs to love and care for - no time for miring down in sadness. I have shed a few more tears. One when I was reading a Harry Potter book and they described someone's tongue hanging out of the mouth as they struggled, and again tonight as I put together this post.
Oscar was a great pet. He was a bit aloof, but he always purred when petted. He was also very quick to reveal his tummy for you to pet whenever you began petting him elsewhere. Did I mention that his fur felt like mink? Well, it did. He let our neighbor's child carry him around like a Raggedy Ann doll and never seemed to really mind it. Oscar also loved jumping on the back of the couch when I was sitting on it. He would not sit beside me (or on me as Felix often does), instead, he would take that flat spot at the top of his head and rub my head with his several times before he would settle down by my head to purr and sit with me for a while. He could always be found napping somewhere - he loved napping. He would take month long turns at which ever spot he chose. He loved Julia's bed the most, but frequented everyone's. There were lots of times I would wake in the night to the soft feeling of Oscar snuggling down beside my shoulders or head.
Oscar was a truly special cat. I guess that's why I tried so in vane to save him. He wasn't sick (to my knowledge), and certainly didn't act ill. This came out of no where and smacked us all in the face. But life goes on. We rescued him from the pound in '05 when he was around 4 or 5 years old (or so they say). Of course this means that we offered him a much longer life than he was going to have at the shelter (this was NOT a no kill shelter). By best guesses he was 9 or 10. Given the way shelters like to underestimate ages to get animals adopted, he could have been much older than that.
Rest in Peace Sweet Oscar. You were a wonderful part of our family!
