Mary Allen
Some people wonder if that can still be worth living: A cat that is blind or deaf or has an amputated leg. But the animals often cope better than we think.
Cat Bocelli is sitting on the balcony enjoying the sun. He stretches, purrs contentedly. The black and white young cat got its name because, like the blind singer Andrea Bocelli, it cannot see because it was born without eyes. Anyone who doesn’t know that would swear that the cheeky tomcat is actually looking at the world from above. Cats like Bocelli who are born with a disability often do amazingly well with their lives. Even animals that go blind because of a cat virus sniffle, an age-related illness, or an accident “replace” the missing sense of sight in a way that is amazing for us humans.
They orient themselves, it seems, almost perfectly with their hearing, their smell and with the help of their vibrissae, whiskers on their mouths and front legs. And so it’s no wonder that cats like the red tabby, four-month-old Sunny, who contracted cat flu from his mother and had to have both eyes removed, jump onto the room-high scratching post as if he knew everything would see exactly what was happening around him.
Blind or visually impaired animals usually only have certain difficulties at the beginning, when they first find their way around in a new environment. Once they have noted the location of certain things or furniture, they walk past them with almost somnambulistic certainty and don’t bump into anything. “But that also means things like the ironing board or the shopping basket, which you sometimes just leave in the apartment, always put away because the animals can’t see them,” says animal psychologist Sonja Tschudin from Metzerlen SO, who is on her Website “Tierisch Anders” specifically deals with the topic of disabled animals. She also advises cat owners: “You can attach small foam pads to tricky spots like the walls next to doorways. That way, the cats can’t injure themselves if they miss the passage by a few centimeters while playing.”
Speaking of playing: Sonja Tschudin says it is a prejudice that disabled cats cannot play. “But blind cats are more likely to have toys that make noises, crackle, rustle, rattle – or that smell like catnip.” Paper balls catch visually impaired animals with amazing accuracy, and play is just as important to them as it is to non-disabled animals.
Disabled People Can Assert Themselves
Deaf or hard-of-hearing cats also need variety. Even if they can’t hear the sound of a clicker, for example, “you can easily click with light signals by replacing the acoustic with the visual stimulus,” says Katharina Aeschlimann Prevodnik. The owner of “Animalsoul – Animal Psychology and Bioresonance” from Winterthur not only has experience from her consultations with keepers, she herself has a deaf cat. “It took me a while before I even realized that one of our cats couldn’t hear.” Because in the cat group, she orientated herself perfectly towards the others. “It was only when something fell down and everyone else was startled, except her, that I noticed it.”
Deafness doesn’t necessarily limit a cat’s life, says the specialist. According to their observations, misunderstandings can occur when communicating with other animals. “With a very young and boisterous deaf tomcat who lived with two older animals, quarrels broke out because he just didn’t react to their defensive and threatening sounds in a cat-appropriate way. We found him a playmate who was also deaf and that was a happy ending.”
Animal psychologist Sonja Tschudin agrees that “slightly different animals” could generally live well in a group. “Blind cats have lived in our household with healthy cats and dogs for over ten years. I’ve never seen a healthy animal bully a disabled animal.” Most of the time, the disabilities would simply be ignored. “One accepts the animals in their individuality.”
Tschudin has experienced that even handicapped animals assert their claims and show their own kind their limits: “One of our foster cats felt particularly attracted to Zorro, the blind tomcat with some motor disabilities. She really took care of him. Sometimes she also wanted to play with him – but then he didn’t understand how to joke, it was obviously too much for him.”