Serious questionCan cats be retarded

I rescued a kitten that was abandoned by her mother at 4 days old and actually I brought her in the house to die in comfort but I took to good of care of her and she lived. Her name is Birdie. She has been back and forth to the vet with URI's and is over that now. She is just over 18 mos old and is smaller than a 6 month old cat but now the vet is telling me that she is retarded ( along with having a twisted spine). She is very strange, but I love her to death. She can never go outside alone and I have outfitted the front porch so she can go out there and hang out. She does not walk anywhere, she hops at a high rate of speed. She is always falling off things and is not very graceful at all. But I know she loves me because everytime she see's me or I am near her she purrs..alot and loud. Can she live a normal and long life?

How sweet.sorry your kitten is not the brightest lightbulb in the bunch -- but she's all cat.

I've rescued 267 cats in the last three years -- hey - we decided we should start keeping count!! Of all of these kittens -- there was "Special Ed". He wasn't physically deformed -- but he was along the lines of a Down's Syndrome kitten. He'd walk three feet away and get "lost" and bellow his head off. He was slow. He didn't catch on to play games with the littermates, he was clumbsy when jumping, he would roll over and fall off of things, he sat around and enjoyed watching the other's play. At first we thought he was a girl and he cried so much we named him Wendy Whiner. When he blossomed into a boy? We changed Wendy into Wynn, from Wynn to Edwin and from Edwin to "Special Ed".