Open Buddha

When you watch your old tomcat walk into furniture repeatedly, it doesn’t take long to realize that maybe he can’t see…

Pollux, whom most of my friends have met over the years, seems to be blind now. He’s walking around and stopping when his whiskers encounter something. He still seems to know his way around the house so diagnosis has been difficult. When you wave a finger about a centimeter in front of a cat’s eyeball repeatedly, you do get a definite impression that he isn’t seeing though.

I think this has happened over the last couple of weeks. We’ve noticed that he’s looked a bit like Puss ‘n Boots in Shrek 2 recently. By this, I mean that his eyes look very large. I realized today that it is because his pupils seem to be dilated almost all of the way open all of the time. I’ve only seen them close down a bit when he has faced into direct sunlight. It isn’t normal for a cat’s eyes to be open to that degree in normal light. That’s night vision mode in my experience.

After some testing, it seems that he may be seeing some light and shadow with at least his right eye but I’m not entirely sure. This strikes me as possibly a good reason to take him to the vet. I don’t know for sure that this came on suddenly but it seems that way and that could mean that there are other problems.