Anthony Clifton

So last night I discovered the least fun way both to spend Halloween and to start NaNoWriMo. Around 5:30pm, Missy and I were getting ready to go to a Halloween party, when I passed Eris, our twelve year old orange tabby, while he was lying in his bean bag chair. I petted him and said Hi and then paused, looking at him more closely.

He was moving his head back and forth from left to right, over and over again, as if he were searching for something on the floor. I watched him doing this, petting him and talking to him, for a couple minutes, the realization dawning on me that something unusual was going on. No matter what I did or said, he continued moving his head back and forth, over and over.

So I called Missy upstairs to look at him and she knelt down in front of him and waved her hand in front of his eyes. When he didn’t react at all, we both realized, with no small degree of horror, that he was unable to see. It was as if he were searching for the light.

Eris has been diabetic for two years and we know that one of the complications of diabetes can be blindness. However, we’ve maintained excellent control of his blood sugar for the last several months and acceptable control before that, while we and our vet were figuring out the insulin dosage. He has had no other symptoms and was perfectly normal just an hour or two earlier. So we were very perplexed about what could be going on. Carrying him to the car, Missy and I rushed him immediately to Veterinary Specialists, formerly Animal Emergency Clinic, where he was examined by a very nice vet who commented what a well-behaved cat he is.

And then, while she ran tests, we waited in the waiting room, trying desperately not to cry, wondering if the problem might be neurological, unsolvable, ultimately leading to some kind of very difficult decision. After a while, however, the vet came out and told us he appears to have hypertension unrelated to his diabetes, had suffered retinal detachment and would have to go on blood pressure meds immediately. She saw no reason to keep him at the clinic so she would give us the meds and send us home. At which point, I asked her to talk more about the retinal detachment, what did that mean and what were the ramifications.

Total blindness. Possibly, but not likely, reversible. Then she explained how well cats adapt to blindness, especially in a familiar environment, since they are able to rely on their other senses which are also more developed than in humans. So we carried Eris to the car, noting that he was still doing the Stevie Wonder thing, and felt our hearts break for him. There had been one moment of hope. When we carried him into the examination room, he stopped the head movement for a moment, looked straight up at the light and then directly at me. Unfortunately, the moment had passed and we were unsure if he was reacting to a sound or was, in fact, regaining some vision.

So we took him home, placed him carefully on the floor and let him begin the process of re-exploring the house using his remaining senses. I went outside and sat on the step and felt hope wash away into the deepening night, along with some tears, while the space it left filled in with despair and compassion for my little friend.

So I went back inside and tweeted briefly about what was happening, why we would miss the party to which we were headed when this all began.

That’s when something hopeful happened. A close friend of ours, a cat lover in the truest sense of the word, wrote back advising us to use a certain blood pressure medicine as it had been known to reverse blindness in cats. She explained that it was critical to start it as soon as possible so as to prevent retinal degeneration. Missy brought me the bottle and it turned out the blood pressure med was the exact one our friend had mentioned. I think we both felt something like hope tugging at the edge of our minds just then.

At that point, it was approaching 10pm. Missy and I discussed whether I should start NaNoWriMo at all, midnight fast approaching. She argued that we had done everything we could for Eris, that my writing at midnight certainly wouldn’t hurt him and getting my mind off of the situation for a couple hours might improve my mood, giving me more energy to be there for my friend. I hesitated and sat on the floor next to Eris, waving my hands in front of his eyes idly. That’s when I noticed something strange. His head was still. I waved my finger in front of his eyes and he blinked. I couldn’t believe it at first. So I kept testing, trying to find ways to confirm whether he could see or not. That’s when Missy convinced me I needed to get out for a couple hours and write. Otherwise, I would obsess and spend the rest of the night conducting primitive eye tests on our poor, exhausted cat, looking for any sign of hope.

So, hesitating and resisting, I went and joined a couple friends just before midnight, receiving from them some of the warmest, most needed hugs I think I’ve ever received in my life. At midnight we started writing, coordinating our efforts with the virtual write-in that was taking place in Des Moines.

Something inside me lit up despite my exhaustion. I don’t know if it was the little ragged shred of hope I’d found that Eris might be able to see again or if it was the company of friends or the supportive tweets I received on Twitter and comments on Facebook but I found something like a voice and wrote in a mad frenzy. We wrote in two half hour sessions, my goal for each being 1500 words. During the first session I wrote 1447 words. During the second, 1210. So I’m about 1000 words ahead of today’s goal of 1667. The prose quality is awful but I’m happy with where the story is going.

Then the monster turned and stared down at Alex, red and orange flames filling its black eye sockets, black and red horns twisting upward from its simian, grinning skull. Huge fangs descended from its sneering upper lip, glittering darkly and reminding Alex of nothing so much as the documentaries he’d seen about deep sea creatures, their strange primordial toothy mouths, the way they seemed to personify evil.

“Muhahahahahahahaahaa!!!” the monster laughed, the force of the air issuing from its mouth forcing Alex to roll involuntarily backward in his chair, the growing distance causing him some slight though mostly insignificant relief. “MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAA!!!”

It lifted one massive arm, its index uncurling slowly from its fist light a snake preparing to strike, and pointed it directly at Alex.

“YOU SHALL BE MY MINION! KNEEL BEFORE ME AND WEEP AT MY AWESOME, NIGHTMARISH GLORY, YOU PITIFUL HUMAN FLESH BAG OF MOSTLY FEAR!!!” it said, its voice booming so loudly at drywall instantly powdered and blew outward from the surrounding office walls, opening huges holes into the offices next door. Alex’s hair whipped violently around his face as he stared through the holes to the terrified office works suddenly revealed in the offices beyond.

All too soon, it was time to leave my friends and return home. To Eris. To whatever Missy might tell me about his condition during the two hours I had been gone.  The drive was too long so I called her on the way and she told me that she thought he had regained some vision, that he had not done the head wave since I’d left and that he was doing things that were normal for him.

I arrived home and found Eris in a state of relative relaxation and happiness I had not seen for hours.  It certainly did appear that he could see me as he would walk directly to me and rub against my leg.  Still, I was suspicious, knowing that cats can react to sounds, whiskery vibrations and some sixth sense that allows them to pounce on things they cannot see.  How to know for sure that he could see?  Waving my hands in front of his face was not a good test.  He might react to air currents.  Shining a light in his eyes wouldn’t work. Cats don’t track things the same way humans do and you can’t tell them to follow the light.

Then it dawned on me that I had at my disposal a sure-fire test.  A grabbed a little laser pointer that we sometimes use to create a small red dot on the floor for the cats to follow.  They generally track it, swiveling their heads, chase it around the room and sometimes pounce on it.

When I put the light in front of Eris, he swiveled his head around, tracking it as I moved it around on the floor in front of him.  It was unmistakable. Eris had regained at least some eyesight!  I was absolutely overjoyed, saying it over and over again to hear the words, “Eris can see.”

So, for the moment, he’s a much happier cat, probably due to the blood pressure medication but also, I believe, thanks to all the prayers from friends and our own silent pleas.  We still have to find out what’s causing the hypertension and keep him on the blood pressure medicine so we don’t have a repeat of last night’s events.  We’re not out of the woods yet but we can at least see the edge.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to write 2657 words on day one of NaNoWriMo and I still have another write-in to attend at 2pm.  I hope to see you there!  If I brought Eris with me, I’m so unbelievably happy to say he would be able to see you too.  Though he’d probably just meow at you and wonder if you had some cat treats.