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| Name: |
Sigmund
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Age: |
Eight years old
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| Gender: |
Male
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Kind: |
Cat
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| Home: |
Bennington, Vermont, USA |
This
is our kitty Sigmund. He has many other names, including
Snigalamond, Stripes, and Snugglebug, but Sigmund is his "official"
name. We adopted Sigmund and his brother from a shelter in 1999. When
we brought him home, he had a severe upper respiratory infection that
included a high fever. He wouldn't leave the box we brought him home in
and he had to be fed with an eye dropper.
After a few scary days, he got better, but we noticed that he seemed to
walk into things a lot and didn't seem to notice a lot of little things
going on around him. When we took him back to the vet, we figured out
that Sigmund was blind; we'll never know if he was blind from birth, or
if he lost his sight during the high fever associated with his
infection. We had no experience with blindness in cats, but the vet
assured us that cats with this disability can still thrive. The vet was
right, because Sigmund turned out to be the best and happiest cat ever.
He deals with his blindness with a lot of courage and cleverness. He
easily memorizes floor layouts, and adjusts very quickly to new places.
He feels his way in tight places with his whiskers, and climbs up onto
things with his claws rather than jumping [we happily accept a little
couch damage as just part of having our friend]. He can even work his
way up to the warm spot on the top of a computer monitor [as in this
picture]. He also supplies excellent evidence that cats can count: he
knows he gets three pieces of Pounce in the morning, and will sniff for
them on the floor until he finds three, at which point he immediately
stops looking; and he can run up or down the stairs at full speed,
turning when he knows he's gone up or down the right number of steps.
He can play with feather on a stick if you use the kind that makes a
noise, and he loves to bat crumpled up pieces of paper around and follow
them by their sound. He loves all people and will walk up to visitors
and head-butt them for attention, and is one of the rare breed of truly
cool cats who are "under the covers" snugglers.
Sigmund has brought us a lot of joy and proves that a disability doesn't
mean a kitty can't be a wonderful pet.
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