Lisa Geichman Prosek

Sky walks around the office scratching on walls. Then I have to rescue him from the bathroom when he pounds the door closed, gets trapped in the dark, and starts howling. I open the door, and Sky’s bright blue eyes thank me. As soon as I sit down to start working again, Sky paws through a stack of papers that almost falls over.

“Why can’t you be like the other four cats in the house?”

As soon as these words snap out of my mouth, I regret them. I know the answer.

Sky’s deaf.

When he was six weeks old and no bigger than four jumbo-sized cotton balls, Sky explored the house as any kitten would, but he couldn’t hear the houseplant on the living-room end table topple over as he frolicked by and didn’t realize trinkets on my dresser fell to the floor in his wake. This wasn’t so bad during the day, but at night John and I had to jump out of bed to clean up Sky’s messes and put him back in bed with us each time something went awry. We went two full months with almost no sleep.

In the wee hours of one long morning, John encouraged Sky to chase the tiny pinpoint of our laser up and down the hall. The poor little kitty got so tired that he slept between John and me–upside down–until our alarm went off hours later. So, we started running Sky once before bed at 11 and then again at 2 a.m.

Not being able to sleep was bad enough, but what really troubled me was the fear that, because Sky couldn’t hear, we wouldn’t be able to keep him safe. For instance, I worried about how to teach Sky to stay off the hot burners on the stove. I feared he wouldn’t hear our admonitions to stay inside the house, and that he’d get lost.

But Sky was smarter than I.

He modeled his behavior after our two, white toy-poodle boys, Ebie and Romey. Because they were the color of Sky’s mother, he loved them at first sight.

Trying to be one of the pack, Sky ran to the door when we came home. He begged for food. He watched when I chastised the dogs for various household infractions. He observed the dogs come to me, beg forgiveness, and get hugs.

Soon, without realizing it, when I left a room and wanted Sky to follow me, I waved him on with my hand, just like I did when I wanted the poodles to follow. When Sky got up on the stove, I made an angry face and wagged my finger at him, just like I did when the poodles chewed our doorjamb. After I scolded him, Sky ran to me to make up.

Sky even snuggled with the dogs, no matter how pointedly Ebie and Romey expressed their displeasure.

While the dogs took occasional nips at Sky through the years when I wasn’t looking, he never got angry. No matter who elbowed himself into the front of the group ahead of Sky or who stole food from him, Sky never smacked the offender or offered any sign of intimidation.

When Ebie went blind and Romey went deaf, Sky tried even harder to snuggle with the dogs to comfort them. Now that we’ve lost Ebie, Sky’s trying to take Ebie’s place as big brother and support Romey.

As it’s turned out, I couldn’t have been more incorrect when I thought Sky had a disability. He was born with the gift of seeing what others don’t.