#deaf cat

[faelicks0325]

Have a cute pic of my cat for spooky boop day 🩷

[bringthesauerkraut]

My cat is done with today as well it seems.

[endearments]

LOOK AT HER LITTLE PAWS

[tallytakespictures]

My lovely deaf lady realizing I'm in the room after wailing for me for several minutes

[maybedieyoung]

This is a Malo appreciation post.

He rarely gets a turn with The Brain Cell but who needs it anyway.

[the-last-thing-you-wanted]

My cat has joined us for the Miami N2 livestream!

[idonthaveacleverquip]

Please enjoy Oberon's Opera rehearsal! He's such a very good singer!

[brennacedria]

It was adorable and a little heartbreaking yesterday, cause yeah I've figured out that chibi is p much completely deaf other than some frequencies on those YouTube hearing test things. Except yesterday, while she was zoomies, I said her name with some sort of tone she ABSOLUTELY HEARD cause she spun around to me, tackled me on the sofa where I sat, and WOULDN'T GET OUT OF MY FACE FOR ALMOST 5 MINUTES STRAIGHT.

A cat with zoomies with a five minute attention span.

How long has it been since she last heard her own name??

[su-c-de-lover]

My poussy

My baby is deaf and blind but is very sweet.

[oldfacesnewdawnoffical]

Just saw a video of a deaf kitty resting their head on a guitar and feeling the vibrations…

So it’s now canon that Privetnose has a stringed instrument that she plucks just to enjoy the vibrations of! I’d say she can even play several songs, but her favorites are very base-heavy since those are the ones she can feel the best!

[tomandgeriatric]

Everyone look at my mom's deaf cat

[endearments]

late night zoomies = sitting in the laundry basket

[duamuteffe]

POV - Jack's evening cuddles.

[skullamity]

As someone who has a cat that is also sick of my shit and will ignore me when she is not in the mood, the difference between her mannerisms and the mannerisms of my actually deaf cat (not a white cat, just like...on a very unfortunate place on his family...wreath....he's got a bit of an over-bite, too) was how we very quickly caught on to the fact that he was, in fact, deaf, before having the vet confirm it.

Even if a cat isn't looking at you, and even if it has learned to tune out noises that don't mean anything to it and won't react to those, if you say its name from across the room or are making noises it associates with you trying to get its attention, generally their ears will swivel in your direction at least a little bit, even if only to confirm that you saying their name was NOT followed up by you shaking a treat bag, so they are free to go back to pretending you don't exist.

I find new cats usually take 2 to 3 months to at least learn whatever name you gave them, even if them "knowing" it is just them understanding that when you make the sound of their individual name, you are more likely to be trying to get THEIR attention than the attention of any other cats in the house. Smarter cats also seem to recognize the names of any other cats in the household, so if I sharply say HAM! because Ham is on my laptop, where he knows he is not supposed to be, Ham will react, and ONLY Ham will react, even if Dusty, my other cat who can hear, is sitting in the same room.

Parsnip...did not know his name after a couple of months. He didn't recognize or react to common "getting the cats' attention" noises like psspsspss or mimicking mama cats chirping at their kittens. His ears didn't swivel when we made any of them, it was like we weren't in the room with him. He plays fine with the other cats but when they get tired of playing, he wouldn't react to Dusty's sudden onset Mountain Lion impression or Ham's sad hurt baby screams (Ham won't bite him back, he loves Parsnip and doesn't seem to want to hurt him? but Parsnip didn't seem to know that he was hurting Ham, so Ham's crying is actually for one of us to rescue him).

He also wouldn't react to noises that normally scare cats, like someone knocking over a glass or the vacuum cleaner or sudden unexpected noises from humans. He didn't come running if he was asleep at meal time even though the other cats come the instant they hear the crinkle of the kibble bag or the kibble hit their metal bowls. You could walk past him having a loud phone conversation while he was asleep and he wouldn't even crack an eye open in disdain of how rude you are for disturbing his slumber, because his slumber wasn't actually disturbed. He'd sometimes seem to get lost in the house if he didn't physically see you exit a room, and he'd just start wailing--I've had other cats that do this, but usually just speaking their name form whatever room I was now in was enough for them to go OH! THERE YOU ARE! and come running, but not this guy.

By then we'd sort of caught on that something weird was going on with his hearing and spent a week sneaking up on him from behind and clapping or whistling or even just going BOO! very suddenly, just to get ANY indication that he could hear us. Nothing! No reaction! We brought all this up with the vet, who couldn't identify any signs that he could hear anything, either, and he agreed that this cat could not hear us.

Anyhow, once we figured that out, we have found ways around things I didn't realise that we took for granted with our hearing cats. If I want Ham or Dusty to come to me, I can get their attention by just saying their name or making a noise. If I want Parsnip to come to me, I get his attention by making a very wide movement with my arms at an angle where he can see me, and once he turns to look at me, I put my hand out, palm up, and wiggle all of my fingers at him, and he comes right away in a way he doesn't with anything else. He's been much harder to teach manners, but we are still working on it. Nothing stops his sad clown wail, though. Deaf cats are unexpectedly LOUD.

All this to say if a cat is deaf, if you have any experience with cats who can hear, you might not instantly know, but you will figure it out pretty quickly because it is a very different experience from what's "normal."

I'm not sure how it is with a cat who used to be able to hear and has gone deaf--some of the signs might be different because they still have habits and mannerisms learned from when they could hear? But a cat who has NEVER been able to hear is going to be noticeably different in many little ways that add up to something being off.

Anyhow, love him, here's the cat tax photo:

[cynicalclassicist]

Deaf cat 05.08.2024

Maria's Ln, Sennen Cove, Penzance TR19 7BX