Payton, My Bionic Cat

Payton is my first born cat. Way back in the day, before the Irishman and Parker, before I had dogs and custom orthotics, I got a gorgeous little grey kitten. He's a French Chartreaux. (Ok, so he's really a shelter cat of questionable breeding, but I had just come home from my Paris trip a couple of months back and everything in my life had to be French.) He came home with me a couple of days before Florida State won the 2000 National Championship and, like the rabid football fan that I was, I vowed that he would be named after a football player if we won. I had been calling the gorgeous grey kitty "sweetness" for several days (which of course was the nickname of the football legend Walter Payton) so Payton it was.

Payton was a handfull from the beginning. I tried to let him sleep in bed with me until the little stinker took to biting my cheek when he wanted to play. So, I relocated him to the floor only to discover eight months and a $1500 surgery later that Payton chewed and ingested EVERYTHING (a laundry bag cord was the offending item that got lodged in his intestines). Anyway, it wasn't long before I had a completely Payton-proofed house.

A couple of years after the stomach surgery, we noticed that Payton wasn't finishing all of his food in 1.3 seconds. (Now, this is a cat that would gorge himself if you allowed it, so a single morsel left in the food dish is usually the sign of a major problem.) So, off we went to the vet and his wonderful vet discovered that he has a "luxated lens," which meant that the lens was separating from the eye (or something like that). The next step was to visit the animal eye specialist (yes, they do exist and yes, we did go). The prognosis was that Payton had glaucoma at the tender kitty age of three.

Essentially, we had two options. The first option was that they could remove his eye and stitch his eyelids shut. Of course, it goes without saying that we would have had to buy him a little eye patch and re-name him Pirate. The thought of someone going "Argh Matey" every time they came over did not sound very appealing to me nor did the thought of my poor little kitty never being able to open his eye again. So, that left us with option number two. In option two, they would use a laser to open his eye (is anyone squeamish yet??), remove the internal part of the eye and replace it with a small grey silicone ball. In this scenario, Payton would still be able to blink, use his tear ducts and move his eye, it just wouldn't be functional for him.

I would like to add that while I was tearfully pondering my options, the Irishman (who was only my boyfriend at that point) asked if the silicone implant came in an eightball. As I looked at him in disbelief, he was trying to explain that he thought it would be cool if we could shake my cat to get answers to various questions.... I don't think I need to tell you what I thought of his sensitive commentary.

So, we went with option two (and no, they do not make eightball kitty eyes) so my sweet kitty became one of the first Bionic cats in Florida. I have to say that most people don't believe me that Payton has an eye implant and without fail, whenever we go to the vet, he gets taken around to all of the new vet techs so they can see his cool bionic eye.

Here's a picture of Payton the bionic cat. The golden eye is his real one and the grey eye is a silicone implant.



So, here we are, 9 years and two surgeries later. Poor Payton has been slowly displaced as he's had to share my attention with a second cat, two dogs and Parker. I think he's adapted to these changes pretty well, but I still don't think that he's forgiven me for bringing home the Irishman. From time to time, Payton gives me this look that says, "Why does he get to sleep in your bed and eat your leftovers? I used to be everything to you. We used to share so much and now I'm left to fend for myself. *Sigh* I thought you loved me..." Ok, so that's probably just mommy-guilt talking. Knowing Payton like I do, I'm sure his look really means, "Where's my dinner, lady?"