POOR LITTLE CARSON!

We are worried about our Kitten Carson, and it's not because he's sick.  It's because we think something is wrong with his little kitty brain.  Mom has been watching Carson a lot lately, and she has been doing some in-depth research on the internet, and she has decided that Carson is just "not right."  He is not doing the stuff that regular kittens do at his age, like pounce and climb and play.

Instead, all Carson does is walk around in wobbly little circles.  He always goes to the left, which is also called counterclockwise.  We don't know why he only goes in this one direction, but he does.  He doesn't seem to know where he is or where he is going or how to get there.  If he gets out of his bed, he can't figure out how to get back into it, even though Mom gave him a much shorter bed that she thought he would be able to climb into all by himself.

And we also think that besides not being able to walk very well, our little Carson is blind.  Which is part of the reason why he can't figure out where he is.  His blue kitten eyes are starting to turn green, and they are very pretty eyes, but when Mom flashes a light at Carson, he doesn't blink.  And also when she moves her hand close to his face, he doesn't blink or follow the movement with his eyes.

It turns out that there's this thing kittens get sometimes, and it's called cerebellar hypoplasia.  And the way this happens is that if the mama cat has distemper while the babies are still inside her, they can be born with this condition.  The cerebellum is a part of the brain that helps you have good balance and be able to move around in a normal way.  But if you have cerebellar hypoplasia, you end up all sort of spastic and you fall down a lot.

I saw some videos on YouTube of kittens with CH, and it made me sad to watch them because the kittens were just like regular kittens, and they were trying to play and stuff, but they kept falling down.  The cats that have CH can have happy lives, but they need to live in a home where their people can make it safe for them to fall down without hurting themselves.  And also their litter box needs to be easy for them to get to.  Sometimes the other cats in a home where there is a cat with CH will not like that cat because it keeps falling on top of them, which can be annoying.

But another thing that might be going on with Carson is that he just has some other kind of brain damage that doesn't have a fancy name.  Like maybe he got dropped on his head when he was really little or something else happened.  Or maybe he was just born with a funny brain.  Anyway, it might be that the reason he was all by himself when that man found him was because Carson's mama knew something was wrong with him, so she abandoned him.  It would be a very awful thing to know that your own mother did this to you, so we're not going to tell Carson.  We will just let him go on thinking that his mama got lost somehow.

Yesterday, Mom called Aunt Tania, who has her very own rescue group called Diva Pets, because that is the group that actually took Carson in, and not the Humane Society.  Aunt Tania works at the Humane Society, so sometimes she takes kittens and cats that the Humane Society doesn't have room for.  Anyway, Mom told Aunt Tania about all of Carson's problems, to see if Aunt Tania thought she could still find a home for him.  Aunt Tania said she had placed cats before who have CH, but not one who was also blind.

Mom is going to take Carson over the the Humane Society today so that Aunt Tania can see how he goes around in circles, and also so Dr. Michelle can look at him.  Aunt Tania said she would let Dr. Michelle decide if Carson should be put to sleep or if we should wait awhile and see if he gets any better at coping with all his problems.

Of course, this is a very sad state of affairs.  I don't want them to put my kitten to sleep, but if he can't have any kind of happy life because he is too busy walking in circles, then I guess that is the best thing to do.