Poor Eddy! RIP

notice his tooth sticking out? loved that about him

Our most incredible, unusual and entertaining cat, Special Ed, lived to see 12.5 years of life, change and growth in our household. He should have never really been here in the first place. It all started in April of 1997 when I was taking anatomy in college and was working for a veterinary hospital. This one particular day, we were to spay a pregnant cat. She was a stray that had been picked up by a family willing to make her their own. After discovering she was pregnant and thinking it was way early in the pregnancy, one of our vets agreed to spay her.

So, she was on the operating table, under the knife, and once her uterus was removed, I decided I wanted to cut it open and take a peek, being in dissection mode and all. Anyway, once we could see the kittens inside the uterus, we realized they were trying to breathe. Long story short, three of the five kittens lived. Two of the three kittens were normal. Special Ed was not. I believe that he was the last one to start breathing and suffered some brain damage as a result. Since I was basically responsible for his condition, we took him in and have loved him ever since.

He walked as if he were chronically intoxicated. If he shook his head while sitting down, he would fall over on his back. He sat with his front legs open wide, kind of like a tripod, in order to keep his balance. He could not jump up onto things and had a head bob that nearly caused him to drown a few times when he was a kitten trying to learn to drink from a bowl of water. You can just imagine the fun we have had with him over the years. I believe that he never really realized he was disabled. He had an attitude, he killed a few birds and he turned many heads. When we first moved into this house, our neighbor was having his evening cocktail and while looking out over his back yard, he saw Ed stumbling around back there. He later told us that he thought he had, had too much to drink, sat his drink down and went to bed. Another neighbor called to say that she thought one of our cats had been hit by a car because he was stumbling around in her front yard. I guess what I am trying to say is he was one of a kind. Unfortunately, cancer has taken yet another of the lively fam pets.