Our eyesight is one of the most important things to us. It is one of the five senses that help us navigate the world. While life might not be as dangerous as our cave-man days when a t-rex could eat at us at any moment, we still need our eyes to keep ourselves safe and productive.
The unfortunate truth is that some people are cursed with poor eyesight, or worse, blindness. You’d think by now we’d be able to fix that, but for all our technological advances, it is still a struggle to fix failing eyes. The most common way to fix the issue is one of the most inconvenient. I’m talking about glasses.
Glasses can get dirty easily, or simply fall off your head. Then there’s the issue of bullying. Kids have it the hardest when it comes to wearing glasses. That’s why this cat has made it her life’s mission to make kids feel better about wearing glasses by wearing them herself.
Danielle Crull is the owner of a very special cat named Truffles. Truffles was a stray found in 2016 in Pennsylvania, now she has a very important mission to help kids feel like glasses are the cat’s meow. Crull spoke with TODAY and said, “she’s a sweetheart. I can’t believe nobody else wanted her.” Along with being cute, Truffles ended up being a very smart cat too. Motivated by treats, she learned tricks like high fiving and sitting. Is this cat really smart enough to want to wear glasses?
The glasses came into the picture because Danielle Crull works as an optician and owns a store to sell children’s glasses. She had the bright idea to see if Truffles could make kids feel better about wearing glasses, having first hand knowledge on how shy kids can be about it.
Truffles has gone from stray to now being an Ambassador for Vision! It all started to blow up as Crull would bring Truffles to her workplace at her store, A Child’s Eyes. Most of her clients are 2-5 years old, though some come in as young as 4 months old. Crull says that the kids are usually shy or nervous about wearing glasses, but Truffles changes that. “It’s just like magic. As soon as the kids see her, they’re like, ‘OK, glasses are amazing.”
Truffles has no problem stepping into the spotlight. She instinctively knows to come to Crull if a child is crying. That prompts Crull to ask, “do you want to see Truffles with glasses?” You’d have to be crazy for the answer not to be yes. One 3-year-old girl wouldn’t stop crying as she tried on glasses, but that completely changed once Truffle’s glasses came on.
Truffles doesn’t just wear glasses. Truffles has been known to wear an eyepatch too so that she can make kids who have amblyopia feel comfortable wearing one as well. “When you cover up your eye that sees well to try to make your eye that doesn’t see well start to see better, you feel like you’re being punished. Seeing Truffles in it makes them feel like she’s one of them.”
Truffles has gone to social media as well. She will send videos and respond to messages from kids who are uncomfortable wearing their eye patch. According to Crull, Truffles loves her glasses so much that sometimes she won’t let them be taken off. “I think animals are healing in so many different ways. I can tell Truffles really feels like, ‘This is what I do. This is me.’”
