Posts tagged "blind cat"

Our friend Oskar the blind kitten is back again, and now he's getting into the holiday spirit. Cat owners know that setting up and decorating the holiday tree may be made into an infinitely more harrowing ordeal than usual if there's a curious cat around. It turns out that whether or not that cat can see makes little different.

Here at Paw Nation, we have a special soft spot for blind cats. You may remember a video we shared last month of Oskar, a blind 5-month-old cat playing with a hair dryer. This is another, even more adorable video of Oskar--only 2 months old here--playing with his very first toys, a couple of balls with bells in them. The sound of the bells allows Oskar to play just as well as other cats. You can see his initial bewilderment grow into curiosity and then active joy as he discovers how to have fun with his new toys.

Do you remember our old friend Jack Tripper, the cat who was born without eyes? We learned from Jack (and his owner, Jamie) that a cat can adapt quite well to its environment when born blind. "He loves toys that he can hear," Jamie told us when we asked her what kinds of toys a blind cat plays with.

Rattle mice and plastic balls with bells in them are all well and good, but variety is the spice of life. Sometimes you have to make your own fun with your blind pet. 5-month-old Oskar, who also was born without eyes, can be seen in this video playing with his favorite improvised toy: a hair dryer! Says Oskar's owner, "His blindness does not hold him back at all. He can do pretty much everything that our 'normal' cat Klaus can do."

Gwen Cooper wasn't looking to add a special-needs pet to her brood when her vet called her well over a decade ago with a story about a blind kitten. In fact, she already had two cats and was reeling from a recent breakup, so adopting another cat wasn't even on her radar.

However, the sightless little kitten changed Cooper's life, even inspiring her to write the best-selling book "Homer's Odyssey," which we interviewed her about in 2009. Now, Cooper is back to chat with Paw Nation about giving a home to a special-needs pet.

Adopting a special-needs pet is intimidating to even the most passionate pet lover. Could you speak to some of the challenges you've faced or adjustments you've made to make things a bit easier on him?
The first thing to remember is that a special-needs pet is still a pet, still capable of loving you and providing you as much joy as any other pet. The only difference between Homer and any other cat I've had is that Homer has forced me to be neater -- I don't want to leave things out for him to trip on. This is arguably a good thing.

Some medical conditions require a lot of extensive care, but if you're talking about some of the more common ones, like blindness, deafness or a missing limb, there's essentially no more dependence than there is with any other pet.

That old cliché, love is blind, couldn't be closer to the truth when it comes to a cat named Homer.

Twelve years ago, Homer was a sick and abandoned kitten rescued by a Miami couple. A vet determined the infection plaguing the two-week-old kitten's eyes was so severe, his best chance of survival depended on removing his eyes entirely. The couple wanted to put him to sleep rather than subject him to such a trying surgery, but the vet convinced them to let her do the procedure and find the cat a new owner.

Enter Gwen Cooper, who now recounts 12 years worth of adventures with Homer in the sure-to-be-bestseller Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat.

Before embarking on her latest odyssey -- a book tour -- Cooper talked with Paw Nation about Homer's amazing life story.