In a recent column I wrote about less-than-perfect pets. That must have been a premonition as I have just received my first foster kitten of the season, one blind in both eyes.

I have named her Amelia after the famous fearless flyer Ameila Erhart. This kitten doesn’t know she’s blind. Infected at birth by the Herpes virus, she never could see. Nearly put down, she was saved by her wonderful purrsonality and spunkiness. Now she is recovering from surgery that removed both eyes. She is a mere eight-weeks-old.

This little kitten is a wonder to behold. A rare black tabby (black with subtle striping), she boldly walks about my home. You can’t tell she’s blind until you see her walk into an object. Showing no fear, Amelia steps out with assertion using her nose and sensitive whiskers to find her way. She goes nose-to-nose with two of my cats and my dog, and dashes after a tossed toy by tracking the sound it makes. She even chases after my dog running by.

After only two days, she already had both the downstairs and upstairs of the house mapped out in her brain. If we were downstairs and she wanted to go to “her” room upstairs, she’d climb the stairs and go.

I was moving furniture around on the third day and had turned her special cat tree around, a short one with noisy balls hanging from it. The next time she played on it, she jumped down and ran into a wall thinking she was dashing out the door! Lesson learned on my part to put things back exactly where they were.

Amelia can play soccer with toys, tossing them in the air and catching them just like any other kitten. With her, the noisy playthings work best as she can keep track of them. When she loses one, she feels about with both paws, mewing in frustration if she can’t find it.

Her other favorite pastimes include jumping and climbing. I discovered this when I left the dinner table to rinse my plate, only to find her on my chair when I returned. Two days later I turned my back for a moment and she scampered up to the top of a big cat tree, one she had never been on before. She does have a problem getting down, however, so I have to watch that she doesn’t fall until she figures it out.

Now sporting stitches, drainage tubes, and a rigid plexi-glass collar for the next 21 days, it will be a battle to keep her down I’m sure. As I write this it is day two following surgery and she has thankfully been mostly sleeping. I feed her wet food from a baby spoon, but she is able to eat kibble and drink water from bowls on her own. She even uses the litter box, covering her “business” as a proper cat should.

If anyone would care to make a donation towards her medical bills, you can do so though our website. Please designate it to go to the Tiny Tim Fund in her honor. To know her is to love her.

Adoptions: I’m happy to report that we have just entered into partnership with PETCO in Santa Barbara for cat and kitten adoptions. Please visit our kitties at the store on Milpas next to Trader Joe’s.