Homer

Homer was a small black kitten taken to a Miami veterinary clinic in 1997 with an eye infection so severe that both eyes had to be removed. Blind, tiny and considered unadoptable, he was offered around without success until the vet called a former client, Gwen Cooper, who agreed to take him largely because nobody else would.

What followed became the subject of Cooper's 2009 memoir 'Homer's Odyssey', a bestseller translated into more than a dozen languages. The book's argument, made through anecdote rather than sermon, is that Homer had no idea he was disabled. He climbed, hunted flies by sound, leapt onto surfaces he had mapped by memory, and — in the incident that gave the book its most-quoted scene — confronted an intruder who had entered Cooper's apartment at night, driving him out of the bedroom.

Homer also survived Hurricane Katrina's aftermath indirectly and, more directly, the September 11 attacks: Cooper lived close to the World Trade Center, was unable to return home for days, and wrote about the agony of not knowing whether her cats had survived.

He lived until 2020, reaching an age well into his twenties, and Cooper used his profile to raise money for rescue organisations and to argue for the adoption of animals that shelters classify as special-needs. That is his real legacy: a great many blind, deaf and three-legged cats have homes because a book made the case that they are not, in fact, damaged goods.