Blog on the Lillypad
Saturday, July 24, 2004
 | Cody
Cody is one of five cats that live with my yoga teacher. He weighs in at 24 pounds, and he is the only one of the five cats who likes to stay for yoga class. Our Thursday sessions meet in the teacher's home, in a bare room in the front of the house, with a hard wood floor. There's a carpeted alcove in the back where the mats and blankets are kept in a tall cupboard, and the alcove is also furnished with a desk and a cat stand. After lying on the floor among the sweating, straining, gasping students, Cody will make his way back to the cat stand, leap lightly to the top, and curl up for a good snooze. |
Cody is also blind. You don't notice this at first because he swivels his face towards you as soon as he hears or smells you. And he navigates around the house and even around the yoga students and their equipment just fine. His magnificent nose is his guide, and he is so adept that even as he approaches a rolled up yoga mat that has been stood up on end and leaned against the wall, he gives merely a brief pause and then navigates around it.
If you speak to Cody, he perks his ears forward and appears to look up at you with eyes whose pupils never vary from their fixed width. That's the first clue that he is blind. Those pupils, usually so variable in a cat, stay at about 75% dilated and never alter.
One night as the teacher swept a long handled dust catcher back and forth, the swishing noise got Cody's attention. Face intent, ears forward, he lowered himself to the ground and his head moved back and forth after the sound, his nose pointed at it, chin low for stealth. I was about to insist that surely he was seeing the dust catcher, at least dimly, because his head was darting one way and then the other in perfect time to the sweeps. But then I saw that even though his head darted the other way to follow it, there was a moment when his sightless eyes were fixed on nothing. He could not see it.
I'm so allergic to cats that I cannot pet Cody. I speak to him very kindly, and I can see that he doesn't understand why I don't pet him, especially when he arches up so invitingly with his head. But the others will give him a good petting for me. He greets us all and then drapes himself graciously at the head of the class or against one of the wall. Soon enough, as we strain and stretch and breathe, he dozes off for a nice nap before he transfers himself to the cat stand in back.
