Category Archives: Loki

Talk about a shitty day

In reference to yesterday’s calamity…  Be warned I am so pissed off about this that I have spared no outrage in this post.  Expect me to be at my most savage.  This includes a tirade the likes of which I hope never to post again.

It was a Sunday morning like so many others before it.  I awoke, took a shower, gave Vazra his antibiotics, gave Loki his steroid inhaler dose, gave The Kids a treat, and finally headed to Starbucks around 8:00.  I sat with friends and enjoyed a casual morning of coffee and good conversation.  Eventually it was time to come home and do chores, so I stopped and checked the mail on my way home and came in the door around 10:00.  I started a load of laundry, cleaned the cat boxes, and then sat down to do some writing and posting.  It was just before 11:00 in the morning when I realized something was amiss.

I was sitting at my desk reading the news when I heard gurgling coming from the bathroom.  It sounded like the toilet.  I got up and went to see what was happening.  There wasn’t any problem with the toilet when I used it earlier to evacuate my bladder, so strange noises seemed out of place.  When I lifted the lid, there was a splash of water on the underside, but otherwise nothing seemed amiss.  Air bubbles in the line, perhaps?  Or some creature lost in the sewage pipes (that mostly came from recently seeing a story about a woman who discovered a baby opossum in her toilet in the wee hours of the morning; the poor thing apparently had crawled up through the pipes and was trapped under the shut lid)?  Something else entirely?

After standing there for a minute or so waiting to see if anything else would happen, and during which time absolutely nothing happened, I closed the lid and went back to the computer.  Before I was able to sit down, more gurgling noises drifted out from the bathroom.

OK, I thought, something is definitely wrong.

I went back to the restroom and again lifted the lid on the toilet.  This time, brown goo was rapidly bubbling up inside.  That’s when it got worse.  A geyser exploded from the bathtub and quickly began filling it with the same brown sludge.

Even I can readily recognize sewage when I see it.  And there was a lot of it filling both the toilet and bathtub, gallons of it flowing into my bathroom in an undeniable home invasion of the worst kind.

I dashed back to the desk and grabbed my cell phone to call for immediate help.  In the meantime, the bathtub continued to fill with all manner of unspeakable horrors.  The same kind of disgusting rubbish was also overflowing the toilet and spreading rapidly across the bathroom floor.

This is a bunch of shit!  I meant it literally.  Sewage was washing back through the pipes and pushing its way through the toilet and bathtub drains — and rapidly filling both and flowing out on the floor.

I reported the problem to the appropriate people while trying to remain calm, all the while making abundantly clear the severity of the issue and need for an immediate intervention.  As soon as I was off the phone, I corralled The Kids and put them all in the bedroom with some litter boxes, toys, scratching posts, and their food and water.  That would at least keep them out of harm’s way for the moment.

With help on the way, I grabbed all the towels out of the cabinets and built my own beaver dam in front of the bathroom door.  Regardless of the cause, I knew this problem would be a whole lot worse if this offensive brew was allowed to spread to the rest of the house.  If it reached the bathroom door, it would not just be the hardwood floor that was in jeopardy; it would rapidly soak into the carpet and begin dispersing throughout the abode, and that in turn would allow it to attack all of my belongings.  Logic made clear that cleaning and recovering from the mess would also be drastically more difficult if it escaped from the WC.

The plumber arrived in short order, as did a couple of maintenance-type folks, and they went to work addressing the problem.  It was already too late to be a quick job, however, and the plumber informed me of yet another disastrous aspect of all of this: the garage was full of sewage and it was flowing out under the door and into the street.

Mother fucker!  Can this shit get any worse?  But of course…

While the professionals worked to locate, identify and address the problem, the bathtub was filling with horrendous sludge that no person should have to see, smell, or otherwise experience.  The toilet, on the other hand, was overflowing.  Under different circumstances, it would have made a nice decorative water feature with the soothing sound of fluid and lavish flow over smooth porcelain surfaces.  But there was nothing satisfying with this.

The smell was overwhelming, sending me often to the edge of nausea.  And it kept coming.

There was a growing pool of the unpleasant muck on the bathroom floor, and the towels I’d already strategically placed at the door were rapidly becoming saturated in brown waste material and liquid.  I grabbed the rest of the towels I’d smartly stacked next to the door and added them to the growing structure blocking the filth from the rest of the house.  It didn’t take long for them likewise to become heavy with sludge.  I could see small pools beginning to seep through as it continued its way toward the door.

I was out of towels.  What the hell was I supposed to use then?

So I began grabbing sheets and augmenting the towel dam.  By that time, of course, the bathtub was more than three-quarters full and still it did not stop.  The toilet, on the other hand, was beyond hope.  It overflowed in symmetrical fashion with a roar that waterfalls might otherwise joyfully provide.  This was not joyful, though.

Having found the clog in the main sewer line right under my garage, the plumber was quickly working to clear the flow and stop this disgusting incursion.  By then, I was adding blankets to my little structure as the bathtub continued to fill and the bathroom itself became full of nauseous fumes and sewage.  If the flow was not stemmed quickly, there was nothing else I could do to keep it from expanding beyond the one room where it was isolated (excepting, of course, the garage).

Then, as suddenly as it began, the smelly cesspool began to drain.  Mere inches from the top, the level in the bathtub began to go down, and the toilet rapidly emptied.  The plumber obviously found the problem.

One of the maintenance folks came in with a wet-vac and promptly hit the bathroom.  With a standing pool of raw sewage on the floor and my makeshift barrier succumbing to the onslaught, he was just in time to save the day.

The plumber later reported what precisely caused the problem: a tampon, but not just a tampon.  It was a tampon wrapped in a wad of paper towels.

With a preemptive apology to those with sensitive natures, be forewarned I’m about to be as rude as I have ever been.

What kind of fucking cunt crackwhore bitch-from-hell lunatic vagina-bearing asshole flushes a tampon?  More importantly, what level of female ignorance is involved with a ho who will first wrap her used tampon in a huge wad of paper towels before flushing it?  Is there no intelligence involved in such a thing?  No level of common sense that might prevail against horrendous stupidity?

I don’t care how bad you’re bleeding, bitch, but you better take that shit and dispose of it properly instead of subjecting so many others to the unwarranted horrors of an apparent lack of brain power as is necessary to perform this kind of oblivious assault.  You inundated the senses and homes of people with sewage, and the people who suffered aren’t nearly as stupid and dumb and ignorant and unworthy of life as you are.

This is one case where I believe the wench responsible should be taken out and shot, but only after cramming up her you-know-what a dirty tampon wrapped in a wad of paper towels soaked in raw sewage.  Perhaps then she’d get the point.

Listen up, people, because I’m only saying this once.

You do not flush tampons.  Regardless of whatever white trash existence you may have grown up in, you don’t put that shit down the toilet.

You do not flush paper towels.  There is a level of intellect required to know this, and I believe it’s equivalent to the tables used by kindergarten children.

You just don’t do this fucking shit.

If you’re so intellectually challenged that you don’t know this, you don’t deserve to live.  You sure as hell don’t deserve to enjoy any semblance of civilized life, but civilized is absolutely what you ARE NOT!

While I doubt it will happen, I assure you I will be merciless if I ever figure out what empty-headed cunt-bitch-whore-crack-slut-from-hell did this to me.

But they didn’t just do it to me.  It affected several homes.  I just happen to be downhill from all of them, so my experience was worse than any other.

If you’re a woman and any of this surprises you, get a gun and go shoot yourself.  Do it now before you inflict this level of terror on anyone else.

If you’re a woman who already knew this, then beat it into your children and siblings and friends and any other female you know or see on the street so they don’t totally fuck up the lives of other people by way of this level of incompetent living.

She better hope I never find out who she is.  The least I’ll do is ensure she becomes my new toilet and general refuse receptacle.  And I’m not fucking kidding about that.  I’ve never seen such idiocy in my life.  I hope I never do again.  This woman single-handedly tapped the most vitriolic and vicious depths of my rage and anger.

In the meantime, I’m still cleaning up.  The carpet needs to be shampooed (despite not being impacted directly, sewage was tracked all over it; it also absorbed the smell).  All of my towels and sheets and blankets are being ruined in bleach-and-scalding-hot-water washes, and that followed by hours in the dryer on high heat.  The bathroom floor is being replaced, but it has also been bleach-and-scalding-hot-water mopped at least half-a-dozen times already, and it’s just been sprayed with an enzymatic solution designed to kill all biological life (bacteria and viruses and amoebas and the like included).  The same was done to the garage.

Sewage leaked into the walls, so significant maintenance is being performed there to cleanup the mess and keep it from growing into something even more dangerous.  The toilet and bathtub have been bleached time and again, followed by significant disinfecting, the same enzymatic treatment I just mentioned, and all followed by more bleaching and more disinfecting.  I may never feel secure with either of those again, regardless of how much they’re cleaned.  I’ve used more air freshener and Febreeze in the last 24 hours than is available in the entire city of Dallas, and I’m not done yet.  I’m burning scented candles as long as I’m awake.

And speaking of being awake, don’t think there was much sleep last night.  There wasn’t.  The smell was near overwhelming, and I had to run the exhaust fan in the bathroom all night long to get whatever help I could.  In the heat of Texas summer, I have the windows open to ventilate my home.  I’m keeping The Kids away from and out of the bathroom for as long as possible to ensure they aren’t exposed to the many infectious agents found in human waste, the same infectious agents to which I have been overly exposed in the last 24 hours.

Just so we’re clear on this, our waste products cause the likes of cholera, parasitic fluke and worm infections, tuberculosis, mononucleosis, brucellosis, fungal infections, staph infections, tularemia, myocarditis, rickettsioses, leptospirosis, Reiter’s syndrome, Pontiac fever, Legionnaires disease, Rota viral infections, Norwalk viral infections, Rhinoviral infections, Guillain-Barré paralysis, pneumonia, diarrhea, dysentery, and a list of ailments that is longer than you can possibly imagine.

As the EPA points out, “[s]ome common fecal-oral viruses are also transmitted by person-to-person spread, by respiratory inhalation and contact with infected surfaces…”  Did you understand that?  What I have been subjected to by this witless woman from hell is the possibility that I might easily be infected with an almost infinite list of infectious agents simply by breathing or touching surfaces exposed to her potty experiment in stupidity.

And that says nothing of what kind of threat this poses to The Kids.

I will reiterate one more time: I have never in my life been so angry and resentful at anyone than I am right now.  My life has been turned upside down.  My life and the lives of my children have been threatened and placed at enormous risk because some empty-headed woman who should have been aborted lacked common sense equal to that of dirt.

In closing: If I ever find out who the responsible party is, I will end up in jail because of my response.  Thankfully, that person will already be dead and it won’t really matter at that point since my need for vengeance and justice will have been satisfied.  I assure you, however, she will suffer tremendously and hellishly before I kill her.

I hope I am never forced to write something similar in the future…

I’m not feeling well, Daddy

Loki is still not doing well, but I do see minor improvements in some of his condition.  The coughing fits certainly have slowed and their severity appears somewhat reduced.  It looks more and more like late-onset acute asthma.  While the suddenness of the ailment has damaged his heart and keeps his lungs inflamed, the inhaled steroids certainly help.  He’ll continue on the twice-daily schedule for another week before a final decision is made on his diagnosis, but so far things are looking better.  Sadly, they reached a level of grave seriousness in so short a time that improvements still leave him scraping the bottom.

Loki sitting in the kitchen (114_1419)

He’s still quite sick though, and it shows in how much of his personality and physical prowess is now suppressed.  It has been traumatic to see him go so quickly from a master acrobat and supreme predator to the sickly and weak feline he now is.  He’s sleeping far more than the other cats; powernapping is a thing of the past.  His play is muted and squelched, often quickly grinding to a halt after but a minute or two.  Before, he would play for quite a while and would demonstrate mastery of physics through his fantastic skills both in the air and on his feet.  Now it’s a subdued kind of play.  I can’t help but recognize his fight to experience even a small bit of fun.

Loki continues his downhill slide by way of demonstrating abject fear of the other cats.  This is most disheartening.  He shrinks away from any feline that approaches him, and he readily gives up his food, water, or treats if anyone else comes along.  He will not play with them anymore.  I find myself having to intercept these interactions so he can have his space and feel secure in whatever he’s doing.  This is the most feared of all changes in his personality as it demonstrates he’s fully aware of his weakened state.  He avoids any confrontation, even if it is just passing by someone, because he undoubtedly feels threatened by his own ailment and inability to defend himself.  His siblings are now a threat.

He’s lost a whole pound (half a kilogram).  Because his fur is medium in length, the weight loss is not as apparent as it would be on cats with short fur.  That doesn’t mean it’s not noticeable, however, as I can feel the difference when I pick him up or pet him.  The ripped and defined musculature for which he has long been known seems to be fading into the background of a weakening body struggling to survive.

Close-up of Loki sleeping on the cat castle with his head hanging over the edge (119_1955)

At only nine-and-a-half years old, this rapid decline breaks my heart.

He is Hunter, that which is a predator of all things, the master of the hunt, and now he is afraid to stand his ground even for a meal.  He is Satan, the stealer of souls, he who inflicts harm for the fun of it, and now he barely can wrestle a toy from my hands and will not face a challenger.  He is Motor, the industriously happy cat, the rumbler of beds and shaker of couches with his incessantly pleasing and powerful purr, and yet now that harmonious sound is muffled and feeble, lacking strength and longevity, as likely to fade into sleep as it is to send him into a coughing fit.  He is Mr. Mouth, the talker of tall tales, the screamer and demander, the speaker at those who have no choice but to listen, and now he says so very little, and what he does say is short lived and quiet.

Looking up at Loki as he sits atop the bed (118_1853)

He is Loki, named for the Norse god of mischief who was as handsome as he was evil, a cat so named for being equal parts beauty and malevolence, yet his divinity has been taken away by his own body, his mastery of mischief a thing of the past, his beauty the remaining trait that fights to remain in the wake of this perpetual onslaught from the inside.

My life’s miscellany

All from an e-mail conversation with Jenny.

Regarding my disinterest in pursuing jobs that will demand most of my time, energy, and mental capacity, all while giving little if anything in return:

See, it’s that situation with your job that has kept me from pursuing a couple of opportunities and two offers since I started looking for a job. I’m not doing it again. Ever. I can’t, Sweetie, and I’ll gladly accept lower pay — and adapt accordingly — to avoid it. I do not — WILL NOT — live to work. We should work to live; we should have opportunities to enjoy the fruits of our labor; we should know what it is not to think about work for the vast majority of weekends and off time. I have spent 20 years in this industry and in the working world itself. I’ll be 36 in four months and feel that everything was taken from me beginning with my first job. My kids deserve more. My family deserves more. My friends deserve more. I deserve more. Lee, Cedric, and I continued that conversation after you left Starbucks yesterday morning, and I adamantly made clear I’m not going to do it again. I can’t. I won’t. I refuse to.

Then:

As I said, those are the reasons I’m being picky about possible employment. I’m just not doing it again. I’ve had it and I’m not even 40. That’s sad. It’s also not uncommon in this country. Our capitalism must change. Otherwise, jobs go overseas and Americans belligerently approach all work.

And on the situation with Loki, and witnessing the unbearable:

Loki will be ten in February 2007. He’s not that old, although he can’t be considered young now (56 human years at his next birthday). That’s also why the concern is more for his heart because this is the normal age when cats would begin showing signs of heart disease. Asthma rarely shows up now; it’s far more likely when they’re young. And it is hard to see such a dramatic difference in him. It makes me cry often because he’s not the same cat. It’s like he’s been defeated for the first time in his life. That’s hard to watch. He’s always been superior to everything, although he has never challenged Grendel‘s alpha status. He could. And he would have won — but not now.

Followed by:

Loki too has a heart murmur. It goes with having an enlarged heart, although I’ve not mentioned it specifically. It’s the first time one showed up. Of course, it’s the first time the problem showed up, so that’s moot.

On being tired and worried:

I’m tired as well. I’ve not been sleeping well in almost a month. Vazra caused a great deal of that, and he still does. Loki’s situation has not helped and I wake each time anyone sneezes or coughs or so much as twitches. I’ve always been sensitive to what’s happening when I’m asleep. That’s helped with monitoring Kako for problems given her tendency to announce illness only when she’s on her deathbed. Grendel added to that with his asthma and hip problems. And Henry, of course, but it goes back much further than that. So I’m not sleeping well at all right now. I wish I could help. Talk about the suppressed leading the suppressed…

Is this what they call a transitional phase?

I wanted to share an update on Loki‘s condition.  After finding out last week how sick he’d become in the last month, and identifying the two possible causes as heart disease or asthma, he’s been taking inhaled steroids since then to address the asthma possibility while simultaneously identifying precisely which ailment he has.  Given the enlarged heart and inflamed bronchioles in his lungs, the diagnosis could go either way.

Loki always has been a very active cat.  He’s energetic, acrobatic, and normally awake much more often than the rest of the cats.  All of that has changed in the last two weeks.  He has become lethargic to a great degree.  His powernaps have been replaced by deep sleep sessions that fill most of the day and night.  When he plays, he plays with less energy and enthusiasm than normal.

Add to all of that the coughing fits.  In the month prior to his exam, he began coughing several times per day.  In the week leading up to his trip to the vet, they become far more numerous — often occurring six or more times per day.  His mood also worsened in that time.

He’s now been on the inhaler since last Wednesday after his annual exam.  As of today, the coughing fits seem to have stabilized to half-a-dozen per day and appear to be lessening both in number and severity.  It is far too early to make assumptions based on that.  While I’d like to declare he has asthma and the treatment is working, I believe he needs more time on the inhaler to verify that.  If the coughing fits drop off dramatically over the next week, we can be confident in that diagnosis.  If they do not, the inhaler may have addressed the increased strain on his lungs while not solving the underlying cause.  Only time will tell.

It has been more than a little difficult to watch my personal Satan lose his power over the natural and supernatural worlds as he falls victim to illness.  His brutality has been greatly tempered; he no longer plays with the same intensity and violence which has been the earmark of his amusement for more than nine years.  It may seem an odd thing to say, but I miss the scratches and bites and bleeding.  I miss having his front paws wrapped around my arm while he kicks me with his hind legs and bites me.  I miss the insane flying through the house as he torments everyone with his soul-stealing antics.  I miss the unnatural way he could scale the cat castle in two leaps and could descend head-first at top speed without any danger whatsoever.

The new normal for him is to sleep.  A lot.  It is to play in a subdued manner that is so unlike him as to be alien in nature.  It is to be a more passive feline who cowers in response to sudden movements and to other cats walking by him.  It is to be shaken awake or paralyzed in the middle of movement by strained coughing.  It is to want nothing more than to curl up on my lap and to drift off to a faraway land for as long as possible.

Only time will tell what the future has in store for him.  I am saddened to see that such a powerful predator has been subjugated by his body’s own weakness.  Hell, he doesn’t even levitate or pass through solid matter anymore…

His first weekend

A close-up of Vazra (150_5063)

I am amazed with the ease of Vazra‘s integration thus far.  There have been no significant fights, although there has been a bit of hissing and growling, not to mention a few swings here and there.  He will generally growl if someone sneaks up on him while he’s sleeping or trying to rest.  He has only hissed at Kako after she hissed at him.  Other than some swings at her in self-defense, he only initiated a few swings at Grendel because I’d already worked him into a fit by brushing him (he likes being brushed until I have to take his belly, chest, and the bottom of his hind legs by force).

I expected more from The Kids.  Not that I’m a glutton for punishment, you understand, or that I wish all manner of feline violence upon this household, but this is their territory and their home.  He’s the invader.  Yet there has not been a single prominent altercation since his arrival.

Still, I like to think my parenting skills are expert and robust enough to have instilled tolerance and respect in each of them, and therefore I am worthy of praise and adoration.

Of course, one need only look at Kako to understand how absurd that premise is.  She hits me if I point at her.  No, I’ve never abused her.  In fact, she’s always been Daddy’s Girl.  She just doesn’t put up with anyone’s bullshit.  And to her, any opinion contrary to hers is bullshit, so you see where we go from there.

Despite her claim to divinity, and irrespective of the presence of four cats prior to his capture and adoption, Vaza is just an easy-going, laid-back kind of cat.  That helps tremendously.  But it doesn’t solve all of the problems.

The Kids are comfortable, confident, and collusive.  They are the master predators in this home.  They know it.  Remarkably, they are so comfortable in their supremacy that they have been suspiciously receptive to the introduction of another adult feline.  A kitten would be a different story, but an adult?

And yet here we are.  Vazra has not been isolated since his original food and water restriction overnight when he got home.  Aside from that, he has been free to do as he pleases.  This has not disrupted sleep (any more than he already did, mind you, but not for the rest of The Kids).  It has not altered how anyone acts.  Treats have not been suspended.  Lap and shoulder time have not disappeared.  Where we sit, rest, and sleep has not changed.  Play has not been altered.  Kisses are still kisses.  Snuggles under the covers are still a part of most sleep periods.  Life goes on.  It’s amazing.

Jenny mentioned recently she’d like me to manage any future cat integrations she required.  The thought scared me to death.  I had tremendous fear about Vazra’s arrival.  For the entire time I worked on capturing him, I cringed at the thought of bringing him inside and dealing with the perpetual aftermath.  Adult cats are set in their ways, and all cats like structure and predictability.  What in the world caused this group to be so accepting of a new member from the very first day they met him?

This is unnatural.  I couldn’t appreciate it more.

Oh, and he already has a favorite sleeping spot when he’s not with me on the couch or floor, in the bed, or at the desk.

Vazra sleeping in his favorite place (150_5083)