She is affected with the feline equivalent of cerebral palsey, probably due to prenatal exposure to feline distemper which affected the portion of her brain that controls voluntary muscle movement. She totters around the house like a drunken sailor, undaunted by her own clumsiness.

I don't know why her original family took her to the Animal Shelter. Perhaps they tired of her. Perhaps they didn't want to bother with a cat. For whatever reason, it turned out for the best, even though Slippers, confined in a small cage, was pretty pitiful. She was so "tippy" that she had to dip her paw in her water dish and lick it dry to quench her thirst--to lean over her dish was to invite a dunking. With her unsteady movements, she was forever tipping over her litterbox or food dishes.

I guess that's what got my attention. I would come in on my volunteer day and let her out of her cage and watch her stagger around the cat room, enjoying the simple pleasure of having space to move in. I knew no one coming to the shelter was likely to pick the stunted, plain-jane little tabby with the unsteady walk. They would logically assume she was unhealthy and prone to maladies. But I knew a little about cerebellar hypoplasia. At that time we already had Tiny at home and were under the impression that Tiny had CH, so we knew that this affliction only affected muscle coordination, not health or intelligence. In fact, CH cats are known to be both bright and cheerful little souls despite their handicap.

So it just seemed logical that we should take Slippers home with us.

We learned a few things about her right away.

She didn't like to be picked up and would struggle frantically to escape our grasp. We figured she must have been dropped a few times by children or those who weren't expecting her to be so twitchy in her motions, so we made a promise to ourselves that if we picked her up, we would never let her fall. After a few months, she became calmer and less frantic when we picked her up, though it took a couple years before she learned to relax when we held her.

Apparently in her first home, there were no regularly scheduled meal times. Or perhaps Slippers was just forgotten more often than not. For whatever reason, she was and remains a hazard to navigation in the kitchen, never trusting that we will feed her unless she is there underfoot to remind us. She has a voracious appetite, as if unsure when her next meal is coming, despite regular and lavish feeding for the past decade. If anyone is in the kitchen, Tripper will be there, too.

For the first few years after she came to live with us, Slippers was quiet and rather shy. She rarely came upstairs to the bedroom or came out of hiding when we had company. Time is changing that. She has turned out to be a surprisingly sweet little cat, coming up to visit us on the bed and lying blissfully on our legs while we watch television. She asks so little of us, it is hard to imagine how she could have been too much trouble for anyone.

But that's all in the past now. All Slippers knows, or needs to know, is that she has a loving home now.