My seventeen year old Siamese, Little Big Mouth, is blind as of a week ago. On this topic of blindness and kindness today I'd like to reach out
to those people who maybe have a pet who is facing the same situation
or maybe they're even thinking of adopting a blind pet and not sure of
what they're in for. I'd like to tell you first hand. It happened slowly the first few months; we thought maybe she was just getting a little senile. Then five days ago she suddenly became almost mute overnight. For an excitable and verbose cat like her this was alarming. She began pacing the house, round and round the perimeter, using the walls as her guide. Not eating as much. Then clingy as all get out. Wouldn't leave my side or my husband's. If she wasn't laying on us or next to us with her body pressed to ours she was busy pacing. We also noticed that her pupils were not decreasing in size like they used to in different lighting. She has the most beautiful blue eyes but now you can barely see any blue at all, just black pupil. Today we finally took her to the vet because she was pacing beside a particular wall with her face pressed against it and wouldn't leave it alone. Then I watched her nearly fall head first off my son's bed. The vet confirmed the blindness and called it SARDS(Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration Syndrome) Thankfully, he confirmed that she still had her hearing. So all those exasperated calls to her from us to get her moving in our direction that she ignored was really just her being a cat and not a sign of hearing loss. That was good news! She still has all her other senses.
Many people in our situation would have put their cat to sleep. They would think that having a visually impaired pet would be too difficult to deal with. We've learned a lot about ourselves as a family and her as a family member these past few days and one thing I can definitively say for sure is that having a suddenly impaired pet is difficult! It's heart wrenching. It's prone to make you burst into tears at the slightest provocation, especially while watching them struggle over something which used to be second nature to them. This is a member of your family who suddenly discovers that a big part of their world is gone to them forever. They are going to be depressed. YOU are going to be depressed. This change in their abilities requires quite a bit of patience and attention from the humans in their life. They can't do it all on their own and some things do have to change in the house for them to be safer. This takes time to learn as well as trial and error. Animals are able to adapt
more quickly to losing a sense than humans. I implore you to give the
animal a chance to prove it to themselves and for them to have the opportunity to exhibit their instincts to you before
you lose hope for their future. Don't give up on them. They have the
same interest in their own happiness as you do for yourself and want to
be as self sufficient as possible. This is really embarrassing for them to have to relearn certain things. Trust me when I say that they do feel embarrassment and shame, and a great deal of fear at least in the beginning. But they'll find a way to be self sufficient and they'll surprise you when they do!! They learn so fast. Watching this particular family member of ours adapt to her new situation has been an awe inspiring spectacle. I wish I could tell you all the little things I've seen her do the past few days that made me cheer for her. I can think of a dozen things from just this morning alone, but then this post would be a mile long and I don't think anyone has the patience for that. I'll just highlight a few and tell you what we've learned so far. Her clingy behavior from a few days ago was due to total petrification on her part. She was literally too scared to move from the security of where she knew where she was to an open void which would swallow her up in her mind. After she gave up being scared, Big Mouth's endless wandering all over the house had a purpose and we just weren't smart enough to figure it out until now. She was remapping the entire house in her head, not pacing because she was ill or dying or becoming senile. It had a purpose! Very smart kitty. Granted, it was tiring on her part and very frustrating, but she instinctively knew that she had to do it. She's learned to lead with her nose and stretch her neck a tiny bit, giving her a small extension in reach so that she can stop before crashing into something. I imagine her nose is quite sore from the past few days.
We also learned.....
We must be decisive about doors. Either have the doors completely open or completely closed. No inbetween. She'll get herself caught behind the doors otherwise and just sit staring at the door jam until you get her out. Her whiskers brush wall-like structures either way she turns whichever way she turns so she's confused and doesn't know how to get out. She panics and so just just sits down.
Don't move around furniture without 'showing' her the changes and letting her explore it. Statistically speaking, that is going to be the very next thing she runs into face first.
Don't leave toys(kids or cats) out on the floor, at least until she gets her bearings.
Overhanging/drooping things are a menace-- don't let cords droop down from one thing to another and loop down to the floor, she'll trip across it or rope her neck into it. Hanging things can be mistaken for large solid objects and this can cause a lot of confusion in how to maneuver around them.
The most important thing I think we've all learned is the value of independence on her part. Don't do anything really obvious for her! Guide her through something and let her feel it out every step but don't actually do it for her. The best example I can give of this is when she got the nerve to finally jump up onto the couch yesterday(YAY!!!) and then tried to get back down after a few minutes. She hovered on the edge and squirmed out of fear; she couldn't figure out how far down it was from sighted-memory. So I wrapped my hands around her chest and guided her front paws down to the floor and left her hind paws up on the couch so she could deduce for herself about how far down it was from her own body mass. Worked like a charm. Now she's up on the couch all the time of her own volition.
Don't just scoop her up, cuddle her or walk around with her, and then plop her back down again somewhere else. A blind animal needs guide posts to figure out where they wind up. Place the animal beside something they know very well and if there is a sound in the room they can use to figure out where they are then that's even better.
Don't call her by her name and expect her to come to you. Rub the carpet or pat the floor so she knows that you want her to go toward the sound, especially if you're trying to lead her out of a difficult situation she's gotten herself into. I've found myself having to do this a few times the past three days and as she's learning so am I, just what works and what doesn't. She's let us know that tapping on the wall doesn't do it for her. I guess the sound travels down the wall too far or it echoes and it confuses her. So now we stick to the method of rubbing or lightly tapping on the floor surface she's on.
Use a glass waterbowl so you can tap the side of it to let her know where it is. Otherwise she'll faceplant into the water and then you're left with an extremely embarrased cat with a dripping face who is so peeved she'll walk off rather than deal with the situation(her thirst).
Use a mat under the water and food bowl for spills. The one we have is wonderful in that is it literally like a dining room table placemat- big enough to fit everything on it with a bit of room so spare. We learned that she appreciate the way the mat has a softly downward curving ridge around the outer edge. When her paw bumps into it then she knows that she's arrived where she wants to be because the material and curved ridge is unique in the house and then uses her nose to hunt around for what she wants.
Don't shave the fur off a blind animal before they can accept their new reality. Fur is a sensory tool. Our little girl was already shaved three weeks before this downward spiral with her eye sight began but we realized that we have to let her fur grow out some more, no matter how hot she is, before shaving her again. Maybe in two or three weeks she can be shaved again. Fur isn't just a sensory tool for them to figure out where they are, it's also a tool to sense who is around them. It terrified her to have someone just randomly pet her without her realizing they were there. Touching fur first is better than touching peachfuzz and sensitive skin.
Big Mouth is still taking her sweet time opening that loud mouth of hers again and wailing to the world that she Wants Her Daddy NOW or Can You Pay Attention To ME Please, I Am The Princess?! but we have high hopes that one day really soon she'll be living up to her name once again. It may be as soon as next week for all we know. With what I've seen from her the past few days absolutely nothing would surprise me any longer. I look at her now and her forever fully expanded pupils and it tears at my heart. I have cried so much the past week. It kills me inside. I can't stand to think that I'll never see her looking directly into my eyes again with that imperious glare that is distinctly Siamese. She'll never wink at me again. She'll never say "I love you" with her eyes again. She looks in my general direction but never directly at me. This knowledge hurts. I have to remind myself continually that she is interested in me although she cannot see me. It's ego on my part and quite a bit of selfishness. We're both being forced to adapt and reevaluate things. She'll probably always walk into certain walls in the house. And then again some of these occurrences are not accidents and never will be. Like blind humans, she uses particular things as guide posts. She'll graze a corner here and curve around something there and then she knows where she is. She gets turned around quite easily still. It's like standing in the woods and no matter where you look all the trees look identical. How do you go about finding your way when you can't even see the sun overhead? But still like the old Big Mouth, she does show her love and interest in other ways. She still curls up on my lap while watching TV. We watch now and she listens. She may not be able to see the blood and gore she loved so much but she can still hear the screams. She still drools on my clothes while sleeping on me and she still licks my husband's knee raw with her raspy tongue while sitting on him. She treats him like a salt lick. We've never been sure why. She still find comfort in the same few blankies, one of which is The Pink Fluffy(AKA my old housecoat which she cuddled with so much it is now nearly an unwashable brown instead of pink). This was one of the first items she recognized positively after losing her sight and it helps her to relax at night with us. She's becoming a little more sure of herself, and although I cringe when I see her walk into things over and over again, now I jump a foot into the air at times because she's learned to use her stealthy cat senses to scare the living shit out of us. She used to make some sort of noise when walking across a room. Not anymore. Big Mouth carefully places each foot on the floor to judge where she is in the house(carpet, linoleum, tile, or cement) and to keep her balance. In return for this new careful grace she now has the creeping ability of the quietest panther. You turn around and there she is right where you next wanted to place your foot. And so we are now perpetually in Watch Out For The Blind Cat alert mode. She is too stealthy.
I'll be glad when she starts being more vocal again, then we can always figure out where she is. She never used to shut up. Now the quiet makes us look around for her frantically, in fear that she's gotten herself backed up behind the trashcan yet again or even behind the refrigerator. She used to get lost in our closet even when she had eyesight and now?...egads. We had to start keep our closet door closed now. There is nothing more pitiful than searching the house for your cat only to find her inside your closet and sitting, staring at the back of the closet door. Of course she's not really staring at anything but it is disturbing to watch her just sit there because she feels like she's stuck. This girl has bumped her face into things more times than I can count the past week but early today when I saw her walk directly out of the room she was in, turn right then left and then right again straight down the hallway without a hitch I nearly had a heart attack. What was she doing, counting her steps? How did she do it? What was she using as a guide? Not the wall. She was walking down the very middle of the hallway.
It's surreal watching her learn to exist without this sense she lost only a few days ago. The desire to persevere, the persistence, the adaptability of a creature who truly wants to continue to live is a tremendous validation of the strength of her character. She's an old lady who no doubt feels a few aches and pains some days. But otherwise she's healthy as a horse and she refused to lie down and mope about it longer than she had to. We can learn a lot about intestinal fortitude from such fine examples.
My big male cat, Killer Kitty, doesn't understand yet that she's blind. She walks directly into his side at least a half a dozen times a day and at least a few times he swats at her. It doesn't take much to annoy him, though. He's my little Grumpy Man. But he'll learn through watching her and she'll learn by getting swatted at that when her whiskers graze against another cat's fur she needs to veer off instead of continuing to walk forward until her head butts against him. Live and learn. Adapt. Grow through experience which leads to knowledge. Gnosis.
Everyone's journey is different but there are key insights which all gnostics can agree on:
1) Make love not war, it's so much more fun. *wink* 2) There is no One Way toward gnosis. There is no certified Correct way which will earn you points in Heaven and you're not damned to hellfire and brimstone if you 'screw it up' a few times. Those bumps in the road on your path toward gnosis are all lessons learned and have far more worth than what you may see right now. Consider them the 'flavor' in your pot of gumbo you call Life. 3) We take ourselves far too seriously- LAUGH! Life is the most hilarious rollercoaster ride we could ever imagine experiencing. We're all imagining it together and that is what makes it more fun. 4) Live lucidly; minute by minute and hour by hour. This lifetime is fleeting so live life in the moment and enjoy whatever we can whenever we can. Count your blessings by the ounce, not the pound. 5) Living is not the same thing as learning. Learning takes effort and mindfulness to the task. Just because you see something happening doesn't mean you've learned from it. Seeing and doing is not the same thing as retention. 6) All living creatures are connected through pleroma(the fullness/the totality). Respect ourselves and one another. We are one another. If we remember this and live like this then we can truly be at peace with ourselves and one another. Big Love is the answer. 7) There is no such thing as a coincidence. Irony, yes. Comedy and poetic justice, most definitely. The All does have a wicked sense of humor. But there is no such thing as a coincidence. 8) Everyone talks to themselves and when we do we are reinforcing our own innate wisdom. It's something we do by instinct. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that we are wise beings so we don't get bogged down in the day-to-day crap that we forget our divine heritage. 9) Past is not prologue! We can learn from our mistakes and our bright sparks will shine all the more brightly for it. Dare to break the mold of what your friends/family members may tell you is your fate. It's your life. So live it! 10) Dream. And then share those dreams with others. Communicate your visions so that others can know they are not alone. 11) And if you're really depressed take a look around at Nature. It'll always give you a good chuckle. Take this cat for example:
See, you're laughing and already further on your path toward gnosis than you were five minute ago!
If we can't laugh at life and the quirky creatures and situations we're surrounded with then truly, what can we laugh at? We tend to get angry with other human beings but animals.... animals show us what we need to see. Like for example: the not-so-subtle hint that you're out of toilet paper; a priceless lesson in humility.
Couldn't really think of a different title to this post. My apologies. But it is accurately descriptive of my state of being at the moment, unfortunately.
Lemme go ahead and get the whinefest out of the way then I'll try to weave some sort of gnostic wisdom into this somehow.
Gripe #1: My stepsons have been driving me batshit crazy and I'm tired of fighting with my husband about their behavior; thank the All that they are at their birthmother's the next two weeks. She is trying to virtual-school them for one of those weeks so that she can keep them a week after Spring Break and quite honestly I have to say that as a substitute Learning Coach she sucks! Ugh. I'm watching the boys grades go down the drain.
Granted, it's been funny from our perspective(mine and my husband's) watching this all happen in their gradebook online. We can accurately tell when she's trying to be firm with them and when they're tap dancing all over her head like she's an idiot. I even wrote her a five page Guidebook for heaven's sake, describing in great detail all the stunts they'll try to pull and how to deal with it! Does she call and ask for help? Nope. I offered. And it was sincere. If she called I would honestly put the crackdown on those boys if she asked me to; however then of course Daddy would have some serious questions for them when they came home about why they act like such jerks. .. oh wait. That was last week. And that discussion didn't really lead anywhere. I feel like I'm caught in the Groundhog Day movie.
Gripe #2: discovered my cat is bulimic. Our carpet cleaner has been getting quite a workout lately. Only made the logical diagnosis when I spotted him wolfing down his food then sauntering his fat ass over to the Siamese's bowl, shoving her out of the way, gulping down half her portion, and then walked over to the carpet to hurl it all back up. I swear this cat is just about too damn stupid to live. (And no he doesn't have an allergy to the food.)
So now I have to feed the Siamese in our bedroom and el stupido gordo in the kitchen, effectively locking the two apart from one another until the bowls are empty or they lose interest. Then pick the bowls up. Otherwise, the male speeds his butt on over to her bowl and digs in. Then I have to shoo him away and that's just a sad dramatic story all in itself because he's really a very stubborn cat and this argument of ours tends to get a bit loud. He's not very good at taking no for an answer. My foot on his face and shoving him in the opposite direction is usually how we settle the disagreement. Even then sometimes he has to be the masochist and come running back for some more yelling and foot action on my part. He is seriously demented. Sweet and cuddly. But demented.
The few times my mother has watched him for a couple of days she always drops him off early saying, "that cat is a jackass!" and who am I to disagree? I have literally woken up to his bad cat breath in my face, wondering what the hell he was doing in the house, and then found a Post It note on the inside of my front door saying, "Honey, your cat is a jackass." No joke. She really does this.
And he is a pushy little jackass. I'm sure our neighbors think our cats are starved and beaten. Au contraire. They just have their humans wound around their little kitty paws and oh boy do they know it. I open a can of tuna in this house and the Siamese sounds like a baby who hasn't been fed in a week. I swear, I'd wire her jaws shut if I didn't love that little brat so much. Her name isn't Little Big Mouth for nothing. A pedigreed brat. At least she isn't bulimic. She does have that going in her favor. And she is the absolute best movie critic. The more blood and gore she sees in a movie the harder she switches her tail across my face and chatters at the TV. She loves scary movies.
I'm just really sick of cleaning up orange colored puke stains in the carpet. Why do they have to put so much food dye in animal kibble anyway? Then again, why do we have white carpets in this apartment??
Gripe #3: My fish died yesterday. I really miss him. Beta. Off white with red fins. He was gorgeous. I think he had an albino somewhere in his lineage because at first glance you'd swear he was a female. I bought him because I thought he was a cool looking little cross dresser and anyone else would just plain make fun of him. I wouldn't. I like the misfits and the outcasts. He was a real sweety.
The boys are coming back next Thursday and I honestly don't know how to reconcile myself with that fact. I feel like locking myself in my own closet and reading a book all day just to get away from their attitudes. And anyone who wants to comment, please be aware of this first: yes, the kids know me. I've been in their lives for more than a few years now. No, they don't need 'divorce therapy,' they're just regular kids who will take ten miles if you give them an inch. With ADHD. And lungs. And the ability to turn my hair gray with their reckless shenanigans. Hubby says that if they both keeps this crap up he's going to have to switch to the night shift. (I'm not quite convinced that he doesn't fear I have homicidal tendencies.) Nah. Xanax + iPod. Problem solved. But that doesn't mean my roots don't need constant touch ups from the stress. I'm giving Clairol a lot of my money lately.
If it was legal I'd put them both in a box, turn on a camera, sell tickets to the fight, and let them duke it out like a pair of pissed off chinchillas. I think that sometimes that's just what siblings need- to kick the crap out of eachother and be done with it. That'd be stress relieving for all of us, don't you think? The masses are entertained, money flows in the bank, and the kids end up so tired that they actually don't have the energy to run their mouths and piss anyone off.
About that gnostic wisdom bit I mentioned in the beginning? I just ain't feeling it. The closest I've come to any kind of rational thought the past few days is today when I finished reading Anne Rice's "Vittorio, The Vampire" book. (First edition, ya'll! My first edition collection of Anne Rice's books are my only materialistic vice.)
Page nine of the book contained such a piece of eloquent drama I feel compelled to recount it for you here. Simply magnificent!!
Vittorio is talking about how he may be a blood sucking revenant of a monster but that makes him no less a human being with human feelings with an equally important life story to tell. Then he began reciting a passage from Sheridan Le Fanu's story called "the Familiar."
"Whatever may be my uncertainty as to the authenticity of what we are taught to call revelation, of one fact I am deeply and horribly convinced, that there does exist beyond this a spiritual world-- a system whose workings are generally in mercy hidden from us-- a system which may be, and which is sometimes, partially and terribly revealed. I am sure-- I know... that there is a god-- a dreadful God-- and that retribution follows guilt, in ways most mysterious and stupendous-- by agencies the most inexplicable and terrific; -- that there is a spiritual system-- great God, how I have been convinced!- a system malignant, and inexplicable, and omnipotent, under whose persecutions I am, and have been, suffering the torments of the damned!
Vittorio then begins speaking to his Readers again saying,
"What do you think of that?
I am myself rather mortally struck by it. I don't think I am prepared to speak of our God as "dreadful" or our system as "malignant," but there seems to be an eerie inescapable ring of truth to these words, written in fiction but obviously with much emotion.
It matters to me because I suffer under a terrible curse, quite unique to me, I think, as a vampire. That is, the others don't share it. But I think we all-- human, vampire, all of us who are sentient and can weep-- we all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge."
This curse Vittorio bears is indeed unique among vampires: he can see the divine glow of the human Spark in every person on the planet. Vampire, human, doesn't matter. Anyone with a human soul has this gold aura to his eyes.
So as he's killing to feed he has to acknowledge that his actions are slowly snuffing out a spark from the Divine. He literally sees the light dim and then die altogether. That is the unique suffering he must bear. And why? Because he broke a deal with three angels.
The angels agreed to help him physically enter the vampire coven's(this is when he was human still) castle if he himself will do the actual slaying in order to avenge his slaughtered village. The angels cannot kill without divine command so Vittorio has to do the actual killing. The angels fulfill their part of the bargain but Vittorio grows a conscience and backs out when it comes to the last coven member, Ursula, with whom he is unfortunately infatuated.
He argues with the angels saying that if Ursula repents of all her past sins then he will kill her-- IF they swear that her soul will go to Heaven. But the angels cannot say whether or not her soul will go to heaven and because they see his conflict they back away and let Vittorio do what he wants. In the end, Ursula tricks Vittorio into becoming like her and he's so pissed about it that they go on a killing spree but that's not really the point.
The real kick in the pants is that two of the angels Vittorio first sees are the very guardian angels of a painter he adores. And because he happens to glimpse behind the veil of reality and spy on the guardian angel's activities he changes(or does he??) the painter's future. When your guardian angels aren't around and are helping other people what kind of mischief can a person get into?!!
Fra Filippo Lippi ends up kidnapping a nun from a convent, her sister, and then setting up a house with all three of them! His vice was women and without his guardian angels to steer him clear of temptations he apparently said to hell with it and royally screwed the pooch. The town wanted to lynch him.
A whispering came to Vittorio's ear, "One might wonder where were his guardian angels on the day that Fra Filippo did such a mad thing?"
Vittorio whirls around and sees no one.
Finally, after much running about he is allowed to see all the angels he brokered a deal with. As a vampire he could not understand why he could still see them. They explained his newly(and uniquely) damned status: he would forevermore see angels when he viewed Fra Lippi's paintings and he would always see the bright divine spark of God within humans to remind him of his bad decision to linger on earth longer than a human should have a right.
Technically, he was tricked, right? But he wouldn't kill Ursula unless she was repentant and she wasn't so..... he's just plain out of luck.
A few points of interest I found particularly intriguing was that Vittorio mentions it's not just Fra Lippi's paintings which take on a lifelike quality when he views them; his son, Filipino's paintings of angels are quickened in his presence as well.
The two angels who first attract Vittorio's attention are portrayed in Fra Lippi's "Annunciation" series of paintings. I managed to find one of the angels. He talks about the one with 'peacock feathers in his wings.' I have not been so lucky to see the second angel.
Vittorio's parting words to his Readers :
"Gold. that is what I see when I look at you.
That is what I see when I look at any man, woman, and child.
I see the flaming celestial gold that Mastema revealed to me. I see it surrounding you, and holding you, encasing you and dancing with you, though you yourself may not behold it, or even care.
From this tower tonight in Tuscany, I look out over the land, and far away, deep in the valleys, I see the gold of human beings, I see the glowing vitality of beating souls."
..... "I am not saying I am a great painter. I am not such a fool. But I say that out of my pain, out of my folly, out of my passion there comes a vision-- a vision which I carry with me eternally and which I offer to you.
It is a vision of every human being, bursting with fire and mystery, a vision I cannot deny, nor blot out, nor ever turn away from, nor ever belittle nor ever escape.
Others write of doubt and darkness.
Others write of meaninglessness and quiet.
I write of indefinable and celestial gold that will forever burn bright.
I write of blood thirst that is never satisfied. I write of knowledge and its price.
Behold, I tell you, the light is there in you. I see it. I see it in each and every one of us, and will always. I see it when I hunger, when I struggle, when I slaughter. I see it sputter and die in my arms when I drink.
Can you imagine what it would be like for me to kill you?
Pray it never takes a slaughter or a rape for you to see this light in those around you. God forbid that it should demand such a price. Let me pay the price for you instead."
Vittorio may be a fictional vampiric martyr but I think there is a lesson to be learned in this poetic bit of prose: Anne Rice is a closet gnostic. And she, like all of us, is perpetually 'under construction.'
And some people say animals don't have souls. I beg to differ. If this couple can be so sweet and loving toward one another then it is quite obvious they feel true affection. Affection denotes sentience and the ability to choose one's mate.
.... and why oh why would we want to pick a mate who would beat us up instead of convey affection? But some people do.
I think animals have the better deal. They don't have Mormons knocking on their door at dinner time, get tailgated and honked at for five miles when they've got engine trouble, or have competing Girl Scout troupes begging you to buy cookies from them(on the same DAY!).
They live, love, and laugh at the silly humans scurrying about in their busy and oblivious lives.
By the end of this video I had a goofy grin on my face. Couldn't help it. Dolphins are such amazingly intelligent animals and to see one of them so happily PLAY with something as simple as a bubble ring is soothing.
Looking at the video several times what I can deduce so far is that the dolphin spits out a bit of hair through their mouth and then uses their blowhole to push a hole through the center of that bubble, making it separate into a very thin doughnut-like shape. Toward the end of the vid, when you watch the cluster of three dolphins around the bubble ring you'll notice that the one who blew it is slowly turning over onto their back and then glides through the center. That dolphin is truly enjoying him/herself!
I think when the bubble pops it tickles their sensitive skin.
Why can't most humans be this happy without resorting to buying This and That and Every Other Thing in the store which appeals to them? Heck, my two cats get more enjoyment out of a trash cardboard box than any store-bought toys I try to entice them with.
