Skeesix Corazon Moore
Skizzy
was a blind (actually, eyeless) gray/black American shorthair
tabby who lived with me since she was 4 weeks old (she was born in May
1995). The offspring of feral parents, she was apparently born with a
cold
that ultimately affected her eyes; they were surgically removed when
she
was a few weeks old. Her mother had moved her into my car while I was
on
vacation.
Lest
you think "oh, poor kitty," let me rush to point out that Skeesix
didn't think she was missing anything -- she'd never seen the world.
She
got along spectacularly well.
Though
she was a bit skittish of new places, she knew her house like
the back of her whiskers, and raced up and down and up and over the
furniture
during her "midnight crazies". She didn't "discover" the stairs until
she
was about 9 months old; after she figured out how to climb up and down,
she'd race me, almost always arriving at the bottom of the stairs first
and turning to leap at my ankles. She played hide and seek with Su-Su,
and "looked" out the screen door. She drove visitors a little crazy
with
her penchant for escorting them into the bathroom (they were always
instructed
to not shut the door until she was inside.
Her
favorite games were chasing a feather, playing fetch with
a crinkly piece of paper, and "capturing" my fingers when I wiggled
them
in the air (she was very good at that!). She'd follow a leather
string moving across the carpeted floor and grab it every time - we'd
spent
hours when she was a kitten "practicing"; she was so good that she
could
leap over my legs and grab the end of the string when it was halfway
across
the room.
Skizzy
investigated each visitor thoroughly, and would quietly curl
up on top of their feet, patiently undoing their shoelaces. She knew
each
visitor by their smell; the day my sister came to visit was
hysterically
funny: Skiz could smell the two dogs, two cats, goat, and horses on
her,
and sat back about a foot from her, tapping the air to figure out where
the person actually was in the middle of all that.
She
liked exploring the out of doors (I always went with her), and
she figured out how to get to the catnip patch in the garden by
herself,
by following the fenceline. When I'd weed the garden, she'd climb onto
my back and lie down.
She
enjoyed music, and would sit at her favorite spot on the sofa,
ears perked forward if she liked a tune. If she didn't like it, she
would
jump down and climb up on the chair across the room.
One
of my favorite memories of Skizzy are her "little kitty
kisses." While relaxing on my arm, she'd find my face with her paw -
then
reach up and softly lick my lips a couple of times.
 |
When
Skizzy was 18 months old, she was diagnosed with an inoperable
tumor in the vestibular area of the brain and was put to sleep. |
All
the cat-related pages
here are my memorial to her,
my little kitty with a heart.
