Saturday, 29 January 2005 02:53 pm
(no subject)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deckardcanineI know several of my readers to be cat lovers (Howie not included), so I'd like to talk about my cat, Millie. Despite my love for "Ozy and Millie," the name is pure coincidence, as is evidenced by the fact that she is 16 1/2 years old. Going by the famous oversimplified formula of 7 cat years to 1 human year, she would be the equivalent of 117. Going by the modern and more credible veterinary formula -- in which the first year makes 15, the second adds 9, and each year thereafter adds 4 -- she's more like 82.
We usually think of kittens as being cuter than older cats. That's largely true in terms of looks and goofiness, but Millie has gotten friendlier, cuddlier, and more complacent with age, so it evens out pretty well. I've come to notice ways that she and I seem to influence each other's personality, a growth in sociality being one of them.
And how is she healthwise? In an odd twist of biological fate, the arthritis heritage on my mom's side passed on to Millie. She doesn't climb stairs as quickly as she used to, and she has to think before jumping onto furniture. My sister's bed is too high, which may be just as well, since my sister has sadly developed a mild allergy to cat fur.
She's also permanently lost weight, after spending a decade on expensive and not highly effective diet food. We've actually started giving her treats again. Actually, there's another reason for the treats: they help clean her teeth. In years past, we would have had her anesthetized for a teeth cleaning, but at her age, that's dangerous.
In the last couple of months, two things have happened with Millie. First, her biological clock got way off such that she would start waking us up at hours like 4 AM. We dug out the pet door block for the first time in years and started shutting her in the basement each night. But when Dad and I went to Nassau, Mom tried letting her sleep where it's warmer, and Millie waited till a reasonable hour for a workday. Since then, we haven't bothered with the basement arrest, even on weekends.
Second, she started whining when we couldn't tell that anything was wrong. We wondered if she had indigestion and prepared for a bad-news visit to the vet, but not all such occasions came shortly after eating. I noticed that she cried only when nobody was in the room with her, and she usually stopped when someone called out to her. Sure enough, Internet sources speak of older cats getting confused easily and needing reassurance of their proximity to protectors.
So Millie is undeniably old, but I don't get the impression she's dying. We expect she'll be around in another couple years. And when she does get to the point that she never seems fully awake, we won't particularly want her to persist.
We usually think of kittens as being cuter than older cats. That's largely true in terms of looks and goofiness, but Millie has gotten friendlier, cuddlier, and more complacent with age, so it evens out pretty well. I've come to notice ways that she and I seem to influence each other's personality, a growth in sociality being one of them.
And how is she healthwise? In an odd twist of biological fate, the arthritis heritage on my mom's side passed on to Millie. She doesn't climb stairs as quickly as she used to, and she has to think before jumping onto furniture. My sister's bed is too high, which may be just as well, since my sister has sadly developed a mild allergy to cat fur.
She's also permanently lost weight, after spending a decade on expensive and not highly effective diet food. We've actually started giving her treats again. Actually, there's another reason for the treats: they help clean her teeth. In years past, we would have had her anesthetized for a teeth cleaning, but at her age, that's dangerous.
In the last couple of months, two things have happened with Millie. First, her biological clock got way off such that she would start waking us up at hours like 4 AM. We dug out the pet door block for the first time in years and started shutting her in the basement each night. But when Dad and I went to Nassau, Mom tried letting her sleep where it's warmer, and Millie waited till a reasonable hour for a workday. Since then, we haven't bothered with the basement arrest, even on weekends.
Second, she started whining when we couldn't tell that anything was wrong. We wondered if she had indigestion and prepared for a bad-news visit to the vet, but not all such occasions came shortly after eating. I noticed that she cried only when nobody was in the room with her, and she usually stopped when someone called out to her. Sure enough, Internet sources speak of older cats getting confused easily and needing reassurance of their proximity to protectors.
So Millie is undeniably old, but I don't get the impression she's dying. We expect she'll be around in another couple years. And when she does get to the point that she never seems fully awake, we won't particularly want her to persist.
no subject
Older cats also sometimes develop cataracts. Then they'll sort of lose track of where they are and need someone to help them get sorted out.
I know one cat (21 years old I think) who is both deaf and blind. She does quite a lot of calling. One of the weird side-effects of her deafness is that she really enjoys having her fur vacuumed. She can't here the vacuum, so she can enjoy the sensation without being frightened by the noise.
no subject