Emotional Support Cat Wins National Award For Service Of Alerting His Deaf Owner To Sounds
Jul 28, 2023 by apost team
Humans usually keep domesticated animals as pets. A pet is any animal owned by a human for companionship and pleasure. Animals like cats, dogs, horses, birds, etc., have been kept as pets and beneficial to humans for years. But animals do more than serve as companions to humans; they have helped provide emotional support (Emotional Support Animals) and helped to ease the lives of people living with disabilities (Service Animals).
According to UMass Chan Medical School, an Emotional Support Animal (ESA) is an animal that provides a therapeutic benefit, including emotional support, comfort, and companionship, to a person with a mental health or psychiatric disability, such as a severe mental health condition. In contrast, The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a service animal as any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.
While ESAs and service animals have been used interchangeably by several people, the two are different and have different applications. ESAs are used mainly as part of a treatment plan and do not require any special training to perform tasks that aid the lives of people living with disabilities. Although they might not have been trained to carry out tasks to help their owners, ESAs assist people with disabilities with their impairments.
One such case of a support cat, Zebby, was featured on Cats Protection on July 18, 2023, for winning the National Cat of the Year Award. The cat, who hails from Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, UK, won the award for helping his human companion, Genevieve Moss.
Zebby is an Emotional Support Animal with a difference. He provided emotional support in Moss's life and made her life remarkably easy by alerting her to sounds around the house, like the doorbell or a ringing phone. What's more, like many emotional support animals, Zebby had no special training to perform these tasks.
Zebby's intuitiveness was celebrated when he was named the National Cat of The Year 2023 by Cat Protection. To achieve this feat, Zebby first won the Family Fur-ever category in a public vote, which celebrates cats that go the extra mile for family. After this, a panel of celebrities selected him as one of the four finalists for the overall National Cat Awards.
Zebby beat the other contenders, winning a trophy and a prize package that included a £200 pet store voucher.
Needless to say, 66-year-old Moss was proud of her cat's victory at the competition. At the event, which was held on July 17, 2023, at Wilton's Music Hall in London, Moss detailed how Zebby has made her life easy. She revealed that living alone with her disability could be lonely, but all that changed when she got Zebby.
"Without my hearing aid, I can't hear anything, but now I have Zebby to help me. He'll come and tap me when the phone is ringing, and then I can pop my hearing aid and speaker on and take the call. In the night, if there's an unusual noise he will bat me on my head to wake me up and let me know. If someone is at the door, he'll pace about in front of me until I get the message," she shared.
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What do you think of Zebby’s intuitiveness toward his deaf owner? Do you think he deserves the award? Do you know of any other Emotional Support Animals like Zebby? Let us know — and be sure to pass this article on to friends and family members.