Turns out he has glaucoma. He’s an otherwise healthy cat, so we had the eye taken out. He seems to be adjusting very well, but the doctor told us he’s going to biopsy the eye and see if the other eye is at risk. He’s seeing certain signs that the same thing may be happening (lens subluxation).
Have any Dopers gone through having a pet go slowly blind? As long as he can adjust and is not in pain (glaucoma can be bad, and try as I might, he won’t smoke any of my weed) I’m not going to have him put down, but the quality of his life is important.
Also, I need to know where I can find very small eye patches, and someone who will write the word “Tai Pan” on it in very small rhinestones.
I’ve heard that animals tend to adjust to things like being blind better than us humans, because they don’t have the “OH GOD I CAN’T SEE!!!” thing going on in their little fuzzy heads. I’d not let him outside, which I wouldn’t do anyway, but otherwise I wouldn’t worry about it. If you move, he’ll probably do a lot of banging into walls at first, though, poor baby.
I had a dog who went blind. After a day or two of bumping into things, he learned the layout of the whole house and you couldn’t tell he was blind. He knew how many steps it took to get off the porch and where the trees in the yard were. He lived for another 2 years or so after going blind and it didn’t seem to bother him at all. I think your kitty will probably be fine, don’t worry. Animals can adapt easily to a lot of things we think would be very difficult to have to do. You’ll probably be amazed at how well he gets around.
Actually, yes. The vet gave us that option. I asked him if we could have the eye made so that he was cross-eyed (he’s a Siamese and both his eyes were perfectly normal. Never did look right). Nope. “Theme” eyes? Pumpkin for Hallowe’en? Turkey for Thanksgiving? Nope. Snow globe eye that would have falling flakes when he shook his head? Nope. Human looking eye? Nope. Just a regular old fake cat’s eye, which it turns out, would turn milky over time. Can we install a tiny windshield wiper over the eye to wipe away the milkiness? Nope.
Aw, sorry to hear that. It often seems like these kinds of problems are more difficult for the humans to adjust to than it is for the animals. Vision is a lot more important to humans than it is for cats and dogs. Their other senses are much sharper than ours.
My dog recently started eye drops to try to stave off glaucoma. She isn’t very fond of this of course, but now that I’ve read your story I really realize how important it is to be vigilant about this condition. Thanks for the warning.
UPDATE: Our cat is doing fine, and it turns out the glaucoma was from some sort of infection. This might have been caught, except that when we moved, we left him with my wife’s parents. He had bonded with my mother-in-law, and when we took him with us initially, he howled the place down, so we took him back. Lately, my wife’s parents have spent the majority of their time up at their cottage, so the cat was left alone with my wife’s brother who, at the tender age of 38, still lives with mummy and daddy, and is a complete jackass. When the vet asked how long the cat’s eye had been swollen, my brother-in-law said “Oh, I don’t know, maybe six months.” I almost popped him right there in the vet’s office.
The other eye is doing fine, and we just have to continue giving him drops three times a day. He’s not fond of it, but he’s a cat. He forgets about 10 minutes after it’s done.
Bastard. (BIL, that is.) Don’t suppose you’ll ever let him babysit your kids. “Kids? Oh, they’re probably around here somewhere. Haven’t seen them in awhile.”
Cats do seem to forget awful quick. My cat acts like we’re cutting her paws off when we trim her scythe-like claws, and she’s back on my lap purring five minutes later.
Dante, my cat didn’t have her eye removed, but rather, bashed-in by some cruel jerk (I suspect a carpenter on his lunch break, at a house down the street). She was blinded in that eye, just the same. After a month of feeding her through a tube in her nose (her jaw was broken, too), she recovered enough to go back outside on her own.
From observing her, it was obvious that though she could still sense light through the damaged eye, but it was useless otherwise. It mainly affected her ability to jump up or down… actions requiring depth perception, which she no longer had.
I’d suggest that you can help your pet in the same ways you’d help a relative or friend who was losing their sight. Remove any dangerous obstacles in your pet’s daily path. Don’t go rearranging the furniture, for example. Keep your cat’s food and water dishes and litter box (!) where they’ve always been, and don’t ‘play’ in ways that unfairly depend upon sight.