This is Dali. Dali is a 7 year old European shorthair and he is… weird. And I say that with love.
It's hard to put into words what's so weird about him, because it's kind of everything. If I had to give it a name, I'd say he's autistic, but even that doesn't seem to encapsulate his weirdness properly.
Compared to all other cats I've had over the course of my life, he seems significantly less intelligent. He isn't elegant at all, as a matter of fact, he's really clumsy and has a bad sense of balance. He doesn't jump very high, the highest he'll jump is from the floor onto the bed or the couch. He gets scared by literally nothing all the time, and when he gets scared, he'll quite literally jump halfway across the room. Sometimes, it feels like he's hallucinating. We can't leave bowls with water around because he WILL tap them until he eventually knocks them over (only to then get scared by the water and fly across the room). He also doesn't drink water. We've had some sucess with a cat fountain, but even that he rarely touches. We give him milk (especially made for cats, lactose free of course) so he'll drink something. He doesn't cover his pee or poop in the litterbox, and after I adopted him 4 years ago, it took him almost a year to get used to the litterbox, and no vet could tell me why. He doesn't purr properly, only very softly and rarely. When you pet him, he WILL lick your hand/arm; it's like he's stimming. He doesn't make biscuits though. Sometimes, he'll try, but he's not very good at it and will stop quickly.
This really just scratches the surface of Dali's weird behaviors.
We're also reasonably sure he's deaf. He doesn't move his ears and doesn't react to noises. Our other cat will zoom across the apartment as soon as she hears the treat bag and Dali just… doesn't move.
Of course, we've been to the vet about his general weirdness. Vet agreed he probably has some sort of neurological condition. Scans of his brain show dark areas that look like his brain fluid doesn't drain properly. He's also in the early stages of heart disease and at one point in his life, he chipped a vertebrae that didn't heal properly.
That is all we know at this point in time. Could all his weird behaviors be caused by one condition and if so, does anyone have an idea as to what it could be? Or is all of it a result of his brain fluid not draining properly? I feel like there's a bigger picture here.
Either way, he's a weirdass cat. And I love him for it. 💕