SIGQUIT doesn't quit rtorrent?

Every once in a while I have an issue with my Linux workstation where
the KDE session will stop responding to keyboard input. The solution to
this is to quit the session and log back in. However, logging out of a
KDE session will close down Konsole, and thus the rtorrent running
inside it.

Thinking I'd be smart and ssh into the box from another machine and quit
rtorrent so as to avoid the hashing when I started it back up, I did
exactly that and then sent a kill -QUIT signal to the rtorrent process.
However, I don't think this is doing what I want it to, as it seems to
just kill the process outright and I wind up going through the hashing
process again on startup.

Should I be sending another signal to properly shutdown rtorrent in
these situations or is this a feature request ? I know screen would help
in these situations, but I'm not usually inclined to run screen on a
machine I'm sitting right in front of :-)

cheers

w