Samantha a.k.a Sammy, but best known as Lalu

Lalu-jaanu, on our first day together. June 2014. PHOTO BY SI

Lalu-jaanu was a sweet and quiet cat. She had no voice, but often a purr. It sounded like the roses in my mom's backyard - a calm hush on days she wasn't feeling too old. She was 10 years old when I adopted her. On other days, she purred as if to say, things inside were out of order. Things that didn't trouble me, because I read purring was a sign of contentment. It was later that I found out it was also your cat trying to tell you that she was not ok.

She was a patient at a cat clinic. I took her there a few times, then switched to another veterinarian because the new cat was going there and I wanted both of them to get care from the same place. That vet only saw her once and told me that Lalu was suffering from pain in the mouth - gingivitis or worse, periodontal disease. The vet suggested extraction and switching to soft food. She told me to think about it and get back to her.

She never saw the vet again after that. Because after AK, there was Mini. Both AK and Mini had significant health issues that I was not equipped to handle. AK at 4, had UTI (urinary tract infection) - at least that's what I thought he had at the time. I never found out what it actually was, and still am not sure. A few days before, he was showing signs that something was amiss, but I had hoped it was the same as last time, and that soon, he'd be back to somewhat normal. Four days later, he was dead. Lalu saw it all. She was on the bed near him. I had him for exactly a year.

Then there was my Mini-munoo. She had CKD (chronic kidney disease) and it was only noticed when her tummy looked like there was a soccer ball inside it. I didn't pay it any mind, but the vet did. She took an x-ray, and then showed me what was going on with Mini. The vet said she would drain the fluid from the cyst that had formed around one of her kidneys, but the CKD couldn't be helped because of the stage Mini was at. She was only 12. I used to say that she accepted death - she stopped eating, stopped drinking water, and just sat in a chair, not responding to me. When the vet and her assistant arrived at my home to put her under, Mini-munoo's former humxn and her partner were there too, and I was grateful for that. She died in my arms.

What about Lalu-jaanu? Well, Lalu passed away about 3 months before Mini. She was really thin - eating kibble was hard on her mouth and probably causing further inflammation in the gums. She had lost a tooth a while back - one of her fangs. I wasn't prepared for what the vet at the emergency animal hospital told me about Lalu's condition. It was worse than I thought. She had fluid around her lungs, so that's why she was having trouble breathing. They put her in a small enclosure and put an oxygen pump in her mouth. I told her everything was going to be ok. She wanted to go home though. As she looked up, our eyes met.

Then the vet came back after the tests were done. Before, it seemed after they got the fluid out, Lalu would be breathing as normal again. This was not the case. They found cancerous tumours in her lung cavity and her tummy. Tooth decay and bad bacteria from the mouth may have been a factor, too. Leaving my Lalu-jaanu at the hospital, I went home to decide on what to do. I called my vet and she said it was too late to save her and putting her down would be the humane thing to do. Mini-minoo was still alive at the time, and gazed up at my tearful complexion. I cuddled her and thought I never had the chance to do this all that much for Lalu.

Just before I took Lalu to the emergency, she came over to where I was, sitting in front of my laptop. I can't remember what I was doing at the time - I was working on something. It was late - around 3 a.m. or nearly 4. I don't quite remember. She came and circled my feet like she'd always do. Then she'd go off into the other room. But after a few minutes passed, I went over to her and found her gasping and lying on her side. This was an emergency and I didn't want what happened to AK happen to Lalu. There was a momentary pause as I struggled to figure out what to do. I called the emergency animal hospital and they told me to bring her in, so I picked Lalu up as gently as I could and put her in the carrier - she was like a feather. When I held her, I felt a swelling on her tummy, but didn't have time to think about it. The taxi arrived.

The thing about Lalu's death was that I failed to be with her when they administered the first injection. That must have been terrifying for her. The first injection was to put her in a kind of peaceful daze. She was alive but barely. Then they brought her to me where I was waiting inside a room with a couch, dim lighting, and a few other things that made it a calm part of the hospital. They left me alone with her before the final injection. I said thank you to her, for the 5 years that she was with me. I said I was sorry that I let her down and didn't check with her first before bringing other cats into our home. I said I really appreciated how much she eventually accepted these cats - AK and Mini - though she took her time. She and AK became like best friends, something that I hadn't noticed until both were gone. There they were, in the pictures. In each one, they were together, sharing their food, interlocking their tails, sitting side by side, one looking at the other as they relaxed in front of the large window.

I looked at her face - her eyes were open but glazed over. She was already gone. The vet came with the second injection and in it went, inside her, to fill up her vessels with pentobarbitol, shooting its way towards the heart. It went faster than that. I was crying, so hard, and kept kissing her forehead. She had passed on. I stayed for some time with her before calling the vet to come take her. I left for home with a heavy heart, burdened by confusion, guilt, and grief. My Lalu was no longer here. She joined AK somewhere in the realm of consciousness, feeling or thought floating in the universe, maybe. Or, maybe she stopped to exist in her capacity as a cat. There was nothing left after, just her ashes.

Lalu-jaanu's ashes are in a small sealed pot like AK's and Mini's. The three petite urns are on top of the bookshelf, along with photos of each of them and their collars. Memorials. Soon, one day, I will release their ashes in Lake Ontario. This was something I had planned on doing last summer, but never got around to it. After COVID-19 is cleared, I promise to myself, to my mom, and to my two kitties who are now my biggest worry, to release the ashes, to let go of the guilt, and to be happy that I had 3 fur babies who lit up my life in the small, precious ways they did.

Lalu was my first adopted cat. I knew she had a tough life before I met her. She had a tough life even after. If I could get inside her mind (and in the minds of all my cats), I'd know what to do to help her remain calm in the face of overwhelming hardship. She was unique with a soul to call her own.

If Lalu-jaanu can hear these words, I hope they will convince her to forgive me.

Rest in Peace, Love, and Joy, Lalu-jaanu, wherever you are, as a spirit, as a star, as air, as nothingness, or whatever you dream yourself to be in death beyond the Rainbow Bridge.

Oct 3, 2004 - Feb 25, 2019. Photo by SI

The Creeps!

Photo of waves crashing against the rocks. Lake Ontario. PHOTO BY SI

While everyone is freaking out about COVID-19, I'm afraid of the night and the strange sounds it brings with it. Sometimes, the wind will rap on my back door, waking up my cat. She'll look towards the door for a while, then look at me. She's not really scared, actually. She's a 4-year-old fighter with some of her feral kitty instincts still intact. My older cat, on the other hand, is a scaredy-cat like me, only the terror doesn't stay in him for long because he's got his humxn by his side. He'd listen intently to the noise or to the silence, would tremble a little, and stay close to me, reaching his front legs out and resting them on my arm. I'd reassure him that it was nothing. He'd sense my trepidation, though, and so would the younger one. Still, they would make their peace with the darkness by falling asleep, so they could travel through another world.

What about me? Who's going to help me drift off? I tune in to the silence, expecting to hear something loud or the crash of an object in my vicinity. But other than the sounds of the fridge and old-apartment creaks and cracks, I don't hear anything else except a constant whirring sound - like water gushing from somewhere. It lasts for some time before it suddenly stops.

Then, stillness. Or, disquietude.

What about the jangle outside? Could it be the tempest tap, tap, tapping against the door, windows, and brick walls? Or, could it be peculiar vibrations, notes, and tones that were comparable to soft thuds, footsteps, or someone fiddling with the door handle? It's been terrifying me since December 2015, if my memory serves me correctly. In actuality, the fear comes from a childhood of being afraid of the dark, of monsters and malice. I didn't know during my formative years that it was anxiety - at least that's what they call it in the DSM-V. But in my mind, it was dread, panic, or the creeps!

to be nothing, i am

New Story by SI

i remember yesterday, but i am not absorbed by it,
recollections of it are neutralized,
i look at it from an observer's view,
it's no longer me,
yesterday is supposed to shape me,
not entirely, or not at all,
since loosening myself from it,
maintaining contemporaneous fluidity,
now I am free,
from its perturbations,
from its bedlam,
from its crux,
to be nothingness, no shame, no remorse,
the categories coming with this physicality,
even they are consigned to nothing more than peculiar details,
of a life lived,
unless i'm in company of the few who have some under classification,
i don't mind, it can't alter or disturb the passage,
because the passage is, during a retrospection, an observer,
paramount to point out that...
i am nothing,
nothing is emancipation, setting free, soveriegnty,
at least to me, it portrays the neoteric,
the unusual, the innovative, the raw,
i don't know why they who are around me are perpetually sobbing,
at any moment, at every moment,
they are chained to quondom resolutions,
such approaches aren't of the harmonious variety,
they bear stagnation, the mopes of no hope,
the people lather in lament,
even though their lives are not in yesteryear,
they are too here and now, they too can find their independence,
or is it clearance,
i was one of them, for some time, not presently, not these days, not ever from now,
gleeful, gratified, can't complain, even though they don't consider it as truthfulness,
they don't believe because they're in theirs, nonetheless,
they require me to be nestled in my own craters, excavate all, like them,
but the observer only perceives if alone, articulates what is prevalent if with them,
what is before them, the people's sorrowing, the people's wretchedness,
when these people ask, who are you if you are not "she" from the past?
i answer, i am me, from the here and now, not "she",
if they wished for "she", they'll never encounter "her", never unearth "her" from me,
"those days", they settled in, with no suffering, no struggle,
with placidity, with congeniality, with quiet partition,
today, the looker-on, only at certain intervals,
in exact definitude, i am awake, living, potent,
i am de novo,
better still,
a blank, a cipher,
entirely a zero.

the story of the ball

reaching up and away by SI

it was a tennis ball, yellow, round, white threading,
it was handled by a few, thrown and caught, then, thrown and hit,
it rolled the few times it thought it made its escape,
only to be picked up and thrown and hit,
again and again,
it wasn't worried though, it eventually will,
it didn't do as well as the other ones,
but it wasn't meant to just be (a ball),
it was meant for superlative catapulting,
that no hand could throw,
although the hand or some other object must give it its momentum,
otherwise it will stay forever under a bench or seat,
finding repose on a placid floor of green,
that was the goal of other tennis balls,
but not for it, not for it,
it was meant to be on its own,
with forms of patronage to move and release it,
with that came minor freedoms, as it moved outside,
and then major ones dazzled it,
it flew over and across an entire route of conveyances and contraptions,
then it made its way through a wet, grassy grove,
torpedoing above hedonistic edifices,
parachuting towards incandescent Moirai,
it wanted to go beyond the caboodle,
feel the sun's rays, the moon's obscurity,
or the hole as it swallows it whole,
and so, all of it happens,
and it is no more, because it fell into the hole,
and into that hole, it must have come undone,
it was a tennis ball, yellow, round, white threading,
but now, it is nothing, that is how it wished to end.

From the Tops of the Hills and High Above Into the Stars...

...this scruffy pale-skinned kid shuffled his way up, moving "in all ballerina-like ease" up the craggy mountain-face that saw him at times half-crawling on all fours or once at the top, standing in utter bewilderment at the magnificent scene around us. He took a raw overview of the space surrounding him now, feeling the soothing cooling down of temperatures as they wrapped their whispery thin, almost translucent frailties around you, the boy.

but, nope, you're not afraid, this time. Cuz you witnessed just moments before that fiery spirit give birth in your hands - your heart pulsating bright reds and then launched into my orbit.