The first thing anyone ever notices about Franklin is his eyes. They’re the first thing we noticed too when we went to the ASPCA shelter in August 2022 to look for a kitten. The shelter showed us him first but warned us that he had had an infection after he was born that left some scarring on his eyes but that he could still see. I think they were worried no one would want to adopt him because Franklin looks a little scary at first sight. He doesn’t always move his eyes and when he looks at you his eyes seem like crazy marbles.

The shelter didn’t need to worry. As soon as we picked him up, he started purring and wiggling and was so happy that we wanted to play with him. I was skeptical since Anna said that she wanted a kitten who was female and orange – and he was neither. But he had already captured our hearts and so even after looking at the orange kittens we knew we’d found our baby. The shelter gave him to us for free.

Despite them assuring us that he could see, as soon as we took Franklin home we could tell he didn’t quite always find everything. He could see some things but especially small things close up to him he had a hard time seeing. His depth perception seemed off too, since he would always be very cautious if he was on top of something he hadn’t been on before. But it did not stop him at all from throwing himself (literally) into life – he never hid once when we brought him home and immediately started exploring his new home.

A vet once told us that he was 70% blind. Maybe that is true but I don’t know how you give a cat a seeing eye exam. Franklin always seemed to know when it would be helpful for him to see something and when it was better to be blind so I think he maybe saw more than he let on. He was already a menace but with full vision he would have been much more so. And we could tell he got a lot from his hearing, especially the way he perked up hearing our voices, even on the phone when we were away.

Franklin was unique from the beginning in part because of his eyes. His spirit shone through having a disability and actually made it just one of his other amazing qualities. Now that’s a real baller cat, if you ask me.