Six years ago my parents said that I could finally adopt my own kitten! While searching for the perfect kitten for our family, we checked shelters, online websites and even local Facebook posts. One day while looking on the websites, I ran into this little kitty face and instantly fell in love.
The title of the listing said, “Little Orphan Annie,” so it grabbed my attention, and then seeing her sweet face I just couldn’t resist her! But, there was something my family and I were very unsure of, it said she had feline cerebellar hypoplasia and we were very unsure of what that was. So we started looking up information and videos to figure out what it was. We quickly learned that basically it causes cats and dogs to have trouble walking, causing them to fall down a lot, and get tremors when they are excited or scared. The reason this happens is because when they are born, their cerebellum isn’t completely matured. Sadly, most cats or dogs with feline cerebellar hypoplasia are put down so they do not have kittens with the problem. This happened to Annie’s mother and siblings. But it is absolutely ridiculous for these animals to be put down for this because they don’t even realize they have it! They think it's completely normal. They are not going through any pain and minus walking a little funny, they are just like any other animal. They run around and play just like animals that do not have it. Having this doesn’t make them act any different.
Feline cerebellar hypoplasia is present at birth and isn’t something that can be treated. I have noticed with Annie though that she has started walking much better than when she did as a kitten, she learned how to work around it. She can also still climb and jump off things just like a normal cat. Some cats have it much worse than others, I would say Annie has a milder case than some of the videos I have seen. It can be very hard for some animals to walk around much at all. Annie, however, just falls over a little bit and sometimes get tremors when playing or during storms. Many owners have to somewhat “baby proof” there house, just because with stumbling a lot they don’t want their animals to get injured. Some animals also have trouble bending down to eat or drink, but this is easily fixed by setting their bowls higher up.
I am so glad I was able to get a cat like Annie. Knowing that she was saved from being euthanized and gets to live like a cat queen is a great feeling. If you find a cat with feline cerebellar hypoplasia, then I would 100 percent recommend adopting them right away. They are the most unique, sweet, loving cats I have ever met who have a very big personality. I hope one day, animals with this condition will stop being euthanized and will be treated just like any other animal. So when adopting animals that have special needs, do not think they are different because of a little condition.
