Remember the blind cat from the Helena shelter we picked up the same day that the Dachshunds Oliver and Twist came? Well, we named him Herbie — a suggestion from one of our regular blog readers, Andrew in New Zealand. I had mentioned that this little yellow cat was a real "lovebug" — and that brought to mind Herbie the VW bug from the 1960s movie of the same name. Needless to say, you need to be of a … um, certain age to remember that film, and unfortunately I am.
(However … having just said that … in searching for a link to the movie to insert in this post, I just discovered that Lindsay Lohan did a Herbie flick in 2005. Somehow we missed that one. Did they actually let her get behind the wheel?)
So this morning in the cat house, Jodie was helping hold Herbie while I took the sutures out from his eye surgery. I had the camera with me, and after we got done removing sutures, I took these photos of Herbie and three-legged Honey Girl.
Our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, and I had wondered how much vision Herbie had in his remaining left eye, which is shrunken and deep in the socket. After watching him in the cat house and doing various vision tests, the answer is: None. I can stand right in front of Herbie and he can’t see me. He’ll reach out with his paw, trying to find me, waving it back and forth in the air.
But that doesn’t mean this affectionate tabby doesn’t like to climb up on the shelves in the cat house! He’ll go all the way up to the one Honey Girl is sitting on. He knew Honey Girl was right above him … she was purring up a storm, and I had been petting her a moment earlier. Thus here he is reaching up to see if he can find her:
And here she is, reaching down as if she were going to give him a kiss:
Wrong! She was only lining up to swat him, and she did! Bad Honey Girl! I was so focused on capturing the angelic scene that I missed getting the swat on camera, it happened so fast. But I did get the moment after the swat in this next photo … note Herbie’s body language … poor guy! And notice Miss Scamp’s right front paw there, just pulled back after the strike. (No animals were injured in the making of these photos.) I think she just wanted to play, but when you’re blind, it’s a little hard to tell!
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