Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Love and Life With a Blind Wonder Cat by Gwen Cooper

Author:Gwen Cooper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Cats - General, Life Sciences, Ecology, Animals, Blind cats, Nature, Science, General, Cats, Pets, Essays, Human-animal relationships, Biography
ISBN: 9780385343855
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-08-25T04:40:11.993000+00:00

I BEGAN TO approach dating with the resolute intention of finding a few brave souls who would pass what I came to think of as “the Homer test.” I didn’t have anything so formal as a written questionnaire (I was a touch neurotic when it came to Homer’s safety, but I wasn’t crazy), but I listened closely to anecdotes and asked probing questions. Was the man in question absent-minded? Was he forever fumbling around for keys or his wallet, or did he have a sharp memory for small details? Had he ever had a beloved pet, one who perhaps had required close attention and long-term care? Was he the kind of guy whose siblings entrusted him to take nieces and nephews to ball games or on camping trips, confident they would return in one piece? I figured someone who could remember that Johnny couldn’t so much as inhale a whiff of any food containing nuts, or that Sally couldn’t spend more than fifteen minutes in the sun without exploding into hives, was up to the task of remembering the very few rules I’d established in my own home to keep Homer safe without having to think about it constantly.

Homer was as fascinated with these men as he was with every new person he met, and they were no less fascinated by him. Usually, they started out being skeptical about taking on a woman with three cats. It wasn’t that they disliked cats per se, but three seemed excessive, and one had to wonder about the owner of such a horde.

After a few visits to my home, however, most of them became devoted members of the cult of Homer.

Homer was certainly a very “boyish” little cat, and I think the men who met him were taken with how scrappy and rough-and-tumble he was. Homer still loved to wrestle around and play spirited games of tag or fetch as much as he had back when he’d stayed with Jorge and his friends. It’s said that most men prefer dogs to cats, and maybe that’s true, but Homer was about as puppyish as a cat could be when it came to instant affection and playful high spirits.

Living with Homer, it was easy to forget the things about him that were so astonishing to others. The mere idea of meeting a cat without eyes struck most people as a once-in-a-lifetime novelty. I think they expected Homer to look gruesome or malformed, because most of them made a point of noting, with surprise evident in their voices, how normal Homer looked. “Like he just has his eyes closed,” they said. That Homer moved with such graceful self-assurance, that he was able to feed himself, groom himself, and navigate around the walls and furniture in my home, struck newcomers as nothing short of miraculous.

Homer was uniformly friendly with nearly everybody, but the small band of men who were granted access to him were sure that they—and only they—had a gift, some extraordinary inner quality that drew this blind creature to them.

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