I procured three adult kitties, all fine but one. She seems to evade any interaction for a few months now, sans a flea drop behind the ears last week, an absolute non kitty like creature. No purr, no play, no notta, just scamper to closet or boxes.
I didn’t notice until recently that, maybe she cant hear proper.
So, I tested the assumption, with semi scientific/logical parameters.
I had ascertained that the kitten is smitten, with a localized hearing impairment in the lower registers. As she only notices the upper values as in, very loud “mice sqeaks”, or vibrations.
Hence forth, I write here to anyone else who may have a similar circumstance with non hearing animals, not necessarily kitties.
Is there a secret code to “mute animal husbandry”?
First, have a Vet check her for an ear infection or even a simple wax blockage in her ears.
Otherwise, deaf cats can get along fairly well. It’s even fairly common in long-haired, white males. Genetically linked, so they must survive enough to reproduce. But it is best that deaf cats stay strictly as indoor only cats.
I had a deaf cat (white, blue-eyed, female) and she got along fine, although she had an absolutely horrendous meow. I taught her various things in sign language. For instance, I could call her to me, if she happened to look at me, by using the finger-beckoning gesture.
When she disappeared, as happened from time to time, I had to go around calling “Here, kitty, kitty,” even though she couldn’t hear me, so people would know I was looking for a cat. Deaf cats should absolutely be indoor-only as they can’t hear threats, but she was very sneaky about getting out at times.
My roommate had a deaf foster - really really hard to train/work with.
Cats don’t do well with visually-based training normally - They don’t grasp facial expressions well, they do not usually manage to grasp the basic idea of pointing (in other words, they’ll look at the hand or body-part doing the action, not towards whatever the action is gesturing towards), and they don’t pay visual attention to people in normal activities. Very frustrating when that’s really all you’ve got.
So after a few months of no luck, we switched to stamping, clapping, and hitting on the walls, floor, or countertop. It turns out that cats ARE very attuned to vibrations, and vibrations can be used for pretty much anything.
Dinnertime? Two sharp thunks on the kitchen countertop.
Treats? Beat once on the wall beside the bathroom.
Come to wherever? Stamp regularly on the floor wherever you are.
After we got most of the ‘calls’ pretty well down, we started working on the visual attention with lots of structured playing, and actually getting down and playing with him - he got better at looking for us and seeing basic stuff in our posture (playing, ticked off, busy (Busy translates into cat: “please walk under my feet and beg for attention”). One thing I did notice was that he didn’t sleep on the couch like the others did - he preferred windowsills and the mantelpiece, where he was less likely to be bothered while napping. Pretty smart cat.
We had him for about 6 or 7 months until he got past his crazed teenager stage, and he went to a very nice older gentleman who was also deaf as a post, so it worked out well, I think.
I had an odd eyed white male who followed me around like a dog. He was quite adept at figuring things out. His favorite place to sleep was in front of the stereo speaker with the back of his head against it. Sometimes you could see his head bounce with the music.
At night, he slept with his head in my hand.
When he first came into the house, he tried fishing in my 40 gallon tank. He, of course fell in. That was much better punishment than scolding, or a little water squirt. It worked so well, that went we brought home another kitten, who decided to fish, we didn’t have to do anything, Joe Joe did it for us. He made sure the other kitten didn’t get near the tank.