One brother has one eye and the other has no eyes. They have such a close connection with each other that it looks like telepathy. Telepathy is the communication of thoughts and ideas without using the usual senses. In truth, these brothers, I believe, do use the usual senses but they are heightened senses because one of them is blind and the other partially sighted.
The fully blind cat, Mogwai depends upon his party sighted brother Buddha when he needs him. But it can work the other way around. You would hardly know, in truth, that Mogwai is blind. This is so typical of blind cats because they cope so brilliantly with their ‘disability’ (cats don’t recognise that word).
They live in Casula, New South Wales, Australia. They are both rescue cats. They turned up in the backyard of a lady’s home 12 months ago. She cared for them. She noticed their eyes were strange. They hadn’t opened at three weeks of age. Being unable to care for them properly she contacted a local rescue group, Inner City Strays.
They were both fortunate enough to undergo a number of surgeries on their eyes. It is not completely clear what was wrong with them. Mogwai had deformed eyelids. His brother probably had the same problem but less severe. There may have been infections.
Along came a couple of adopters, Richard Parbury and his partner KA. Interestingly, they deliberately selected “disabled” cats because they wanted to keep them inside in their apartment full-time and obviously this is more suitable for a blind cat.
Equally interestingly, Mogwai (the fully blind cat) settled in more quickly to his new home. While Buddha remained in his carrier in the bathroom for eight hours Mogwai was tracking the walls of the apartment. He did this 30 times we are told. No doubt he was getting his bearings and mapping out the apartment, his new home and territory.
After Mogwai had mapped out the boundaries of his territory he then went into the middle where he played with the legs of the dining room table and chairs. We are told that he avoided all 20 vertical posts while playing; more successful mapping.
Another indicator of his amazing and instinctive assessment of the placement of objects in the room is that he totally avoided foreign objects introduced into the room.
We are told that when Mogwai become disorientated (which I presume is rare) he calls to his brother Buddha. On one occasion Buddha was playing with a lid in one of the rooms. Mogwai was in another room. He jumped from KA’s arms and raced towards Buddha and started head-butting him in the back. KA noticed that the lid had become lodged in Buddha’s throat causing him to choke.
As stated in the introduction, the instinctive desire to help has an almost telepathic quality but no doubt Buddha made some slight sounds which indicated that he was in distress and so Mogwai came to his aid very quickly (unless you believe in telepathy).
This is a beautiful relationship and it is lovely to see two rescue kittens in difficulty and with a health problem coming through it all with the assistance of caring people to live full and enjoyable lives in a pleasant and loving environment.
Source: Daily Telegraph.com.au.
