Tattoo’s Blindness

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Our kitty Tattoo turned 20 years old a month ago. That’s the equivalent of 96 in human years. Way to GO Tattoo!

About 10 days after she turned 20, she woke up blind. I took her to the emergency room vet. He thinks her blood pressure spiked in the night for some reason. He checked and found one retina totally detached and the other one is about 15% connected. He doesn’t think she can see a thing. Good thing we downsized from the huge house to a 1300 sq ft apartment. She has the place pretty well memorized and is adapting to her blindness pretty well. I am hopeful.

The vet and I had a heart-to-heart conversation though. I want to make sure Tattoo’s quality of life stays up as high as possible. I don’t believe in keeping her alive with science. She has lived a long, and healthy life. So, we decided to take her off of all of her meds except those that pertain to her eyes. She’s pretty terrified these days of taking meds because she can’t see what’s coming at her. As much as I try to keep her calm, it’s not working. She has even taken to eating a bit of dinner and then running as fast as a blind kitty can to hide behind the bed to avoid getting her medicine. It breaks my heart. We will be able to take Tattoo to the kitty eye doctor in July to see if she has any chance of regaining any of her eye sight.

Tattoo was a birthday gift for my husband 20 years ago. He picked her out of a box at 4 weeks old and we waited for her until she was old enough to come live with us. We are both filled with Tattoo stories. She did have one litter of kittens and has outlived them all so she’s definitely beaten the odds.

We are going to cherish our time left with Tattoo and just keep packing on the stories and the memories.

 

Wish us luck as we try to give her the best of her remaining time with us.

Cheers,