Koko And Her First Kitten

On one Christmas, back in the 1980s, Koko, whose favorite book is “The Three Little Kittens” and “Puss ‘n’ Boots,” asked for a kitten as her Christmas present. “But we gave her a life-like stuffed animal and she was terribly upset,” recalls Ron Cohn, a biologist. However, Koko was smart enough to know the difference and denied playing with the toy and kept indicating how sad it was! Soon, on her next birthday, she was allowed to choose a kitten and she adopted a gray and white kitten and named her ‘All Ball’. Cohn recalls, “The cat was a Manx and looked like a ball. Koko likes to rhyme words in sign language.” Both were on National Geographic magazine’s cover that month. Sadly, soon All Ball died and Koko was left disheartened.