We got our cat Dickens when she was a kitten. She had the worst case of ear mites our vet had ever seen and suffered inner ear damage and a burst ear drum.
As you can see here: http://photobucket.com/albums/v101/jsgoddess/?action=view¤t=dickensheadtilt.jpg Dickens has a pronounced permanent head tilt. She tends to drift to the side when she walks, but not too terribly.
The only real problem is her inability to jump to and from anything over about two feet high. She never attempts to jump up. When she jumps down, she turns in the air and instead of landing on her feet she lands on her side. She rarely jumps down, but there have been a few times when we feared she might hurt herself.
A person could learn, within reason, to compensate for the balance issue, I think? Can a cat? Would there be any way to train her to use her eyes and tiny little brain rather than her sense of balance?
(Sorry for the untidy url. I can’t get the hidden kind to work right now.)