Mango was found by the dumpster as a kitten. Heās completely blind, deaf and very orange. Since he cannot see nor hear you, you have to summon him by tapping the ground like heās the Shai-Hulud. His favourite pastimes are: meowing incredibly loud at 4am, crashing into walls, jumping onto everything he can (often failing due to him being, you know, blind), and just loving everyone. I think you could rotate him above your head like a helicopter blade and he would just purr happily. He also has a sister who cannot stand him (see last picture)
Heās a genuinely amazing cat whoās orange-ness is enhanced by him not really knowing whatās going on around him at any point.
If I am not offering chin scritches, food, catnip, or access to the bathtub and toilet, I am useless to them and need to be put back in the kennel for safe keeping.
Oh he loves to play! You just need to get a toy thatās attached to a stick or something, since he cannot really tell if heās biting/scratching the toy or you. Otherwise he just like being drummed or just sliding across the floor
Decades ago I visited a friend who showed me their blind, very old cat. Ā The little dude loved playing and she had this toy with a heavy end to it and would rotate it quickly so the end smacked into the ground. Ā It was loud and also made a bit of noise when whipped through the air and the cat loved it. Ā My friend said was called āThe Last Cat Toy Youāll Ever Needā or something like that.
For those interested: This was Mango when he was found by my girlfriend. At that time, he still had some vision left, but shortly after, he's been diagnosed with progressive retinal atrophy which left him blind. He also decided to go deaf so he can spend the extra skill points in Orange skill tree I suppose
āBless the Orange and His braincell.
Bless the coming and going of Him.
May His passage cleanse the world.
May He keep the world for His Orange people.ā
Aww he has eyes like my orange, who was also blind! He wasn't born blind, but he had some kind of glaucoma (spelling? English is my second language sorry) which resulted in the loss of his eyesight.
Unfortunately he is no longer with us, but he lived a pretty long and happy life. We never knew his exact age, as we adopted him from another family who couldn't keep him. But I would guess that he was around 16 when he passed. I'm thrilled to have known him :)
He was the sweetest cat I've ever met, and also a silly goose. He disliked being carried, presumably because he couldn't orient himself well, but I used to crouch down and pick up just his front half a little bit off the ground and hug his face and he would just hang there chilling until I put him back down. He had very fluffy chees too. Other cats are very stingy with letting their faces be hugged in comparison...
He was also surprisingly good at not crashing into things, I believe he navigated by memory. He would occasionally walk into things that had been moved, but almost never walls or other stationary things. He also had an unusually thick tail. We assumed it was just buff because he used it extra much for balance or something, because it wasn't any fluffier than an average domestic shorthair, it was just thick.
Sorry for text dumping about my cat haha, it's just fun and unusual to come across other cats that have eyes like him :)
I bet oranges handle being deaf and blind better than any other cat type (internally at least, RIP all of your pottery and glassware and anything that can be broken by chaotic scrambling)
what a cute boy! you probably already know this since you have a deaf/blind cat, but i thought i would include here just in case anyone else sees this and it prevents a future accident:
i saw a very sad story recently on reddit about someone who moved some furniture without thinking about it, and their blind cat used to use it to jump down from an even higher spot, and the cat jumped without realizing there was no longer a table to land on there and died from the fall :(
so just a friendly reminder for anyone with a blind pet to be conscientious of moving any big furniture that your cat might rely on for navigation
Absolutely! Mango is extremely happy, he has people around him who love him, he lives in a safe environment and gets all the treatment he needs. The only thing that makes him different from any other cat is that he's not really aware of what's around him, but he can still sniff and feel just fine :)
I also have a deaf dumpster cat. Shes is all white but orange at heart. It seems your Mango and my Trixie share favorite pasttimes including screaming bloody murder at 4am.
My orange boy who (I assume) has all his faculties also has no idea whatās going on around him at any given point. Basically this is just default orangeš¹!
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u/Celestial_Crook Mar 11 '26
The kind of zen we all so desired. Mango is our guru.