A farewell lesson from Azlan the mighty cat
A knock on the door sometimes heralds bad news. Two days ago, at 10am, I heard a loud knock-knock on my front door.
I was expecting a friend, and indeed, it was herself. But she was agitated and struggling to speak. Finally she said it: ‘ There’s a cat lying stretched out on your drive – and I’m not sure if he’s alive.’
We have a long driveway leading up to the front of our house – 100 yards - and none of our three cats spent much time on it. They prefer to stay around the back of the house, in the garden. Our neighbours have gardens that back onto our driveway, and I’d often seen their cats – tabbys, black and whites and tortoiseshells – lurking beside the drive when I was coming home. As I ran after my friend to check the cat she’d seen, I felt sad that one of these creatures might be in trouble.
As soon as I saw the cat’s body, my heart sank. He was stretched out right across the driveway, and his distinctive ginger colour and long body could not have been anyone else. It was Azlan, our beloved one year old Maine Coon cat. He was lying motionless in the middle of the driveway: my friend had stopped her car and had sprinted up to the house because he was blocking her way.
My veterinary instincts kicked in as I fell to my knees beside Azlan: quick, quick –
ABC – Airway, Breathing, Circulation. His body felt warm as
I opened his mouth to check his airway: there was no blockage, but I could see an ominous splash of blood at the back of his throat. Breathing: he was completely still, with no movement of his chest at all. Circulation: the colour of his gums was a blue-grey, and when I felt his chest, there was no heart beat. Only then did I look full into his face, and it was very obvious that he had gone. His eyes were sunken and lifeless. Azlan was dead.
What to do? What to do? I picked up his mighty body, and carried him back up the drive to the house, and into our kitchen.
My poor wife thought that I was joking about something as I staggered in, holding his body close to my chest. Azlan was a gentle, passive cat, and he often lay limply as we carried him around in our arms, so it wasn’t obvious that he’d been hurt. When my wife saw my heaving, spasmodic breathing, for a moment she thought I was laughing, but the truth was that I was sobbing. It’s ironic that these opposite emotions can sometimes create similar breathing patterns.
When she saw the bereft expression on my face and the tears on my cheeks, she realised that there was nothing funny happening. I managed to say “It’s Azlan. He’s dead”, and the room descended into a misery of tears and emotion.
Later that day, as we gathered ourselves, we began to talk about what might have happened to Azlan. He had no visible physical injury other than the bleeding at the back of his mouth. Could it have been a spontaneous brain haemorrhage? At that point, I noticed the claws of his front feet: they had been scuffed and the tips were shredded, with signs of bleeding. This is a classic finding when a cat has been hit by a car: the feet reflexly grip the ground tightly at the moment of impact. There was no doubt about it: Azlan must have wandered down our driveway to the busy main road. He must have walked – or ran – into the path of a car, and been dealt a passing blow to the side of his head. As cats often do after accidents, he had somehow managed to sprint away from the scene for twenty or thirty yards, running homewards, before flopping down onto his side. He must have had a severe brain injury, with haemorrhage inside his skull as well as at the back of his throat. An autopsy would be needed to confirm this absolutely, but there was no other conceivable cause of death.
Road accidents are the most common cause of death of young cats, and we had been aware of this risk to Azlan. We kept him in every night – he slept at the end of our bed – because there’s a higher risk of a road accident during the hours of darkness. But we knew that he loved being outside, and so we had given him the freedom to do as he pleased during the hours of daylight, and that sadly came at a price. We had never seen him on our driveway, nor anywhere near the main road, so we had not thought there was a significant threat. With hindsight, of course, after a tragedy it is very easy to think through things again. He had been seen in a neighbouring housing estate, so we had known that as a young adult cat he was beginning to extend the range of his territory. I had planned to use a collar GPS device to track his movements. Perhaps if I’d done that we might have realised that he was starting to get dangerously close to a busy road and we could have done more to keep him in.
It’s all too late now. Azlan has gone, and he’s left a void in our lives. As a friend told me on Facebook, when a pet dies, it’s like someone has punched a hole in you.
Life is temporary, and although few lives are as short as Azlan’s, the end comes eventually for all pets and people. We had many wonderful moments with this fine cat, but if I had known he was going to go so soon, I would have made sure I’d had spent even more time with him. Azlan’s lesson to me is simple: cherish the time you have with loved ones. Nothing goes on forever.