How do cats behave when they become elderly?

Many owners fail to notice that their cats have reached 'old age'.

This is due to the fact that senility has little effect on the feline appetite. Because they continue to eat greedily and with their usual vigour, it is thought that they are still 'young ~~~~~ But there are certain tell-tale signs of ageing. Leaping and grooming are the first actions to suffer, and for the same reason. Old age makes the cat's joints stiffer and this leads to slower movements. Leaping up on to a chair or a table, or outside up on to a wall, becomes increasingly difficult. Very old cats actually need to be lifted up on to a favourite chair. As the supple quality of the young cat's flexible body is lost, it also becomes increasingly awkward for the cat to twist its neck round to groom the more inaccessible parts of its coat. These areas of its fur start to look dishevelled and at this stage a little gentle grooming by the animal's owner is a great help, even if the cat in question is not one that has generally been fussed over with brush and comb in its younger days. As the elderly cat's body becomes more rigid, so do its habits. Its daily routine becomes increasingly fixed and novelties cause distress now, where once they may have aroused acute interest. The idea of buying a young kitten to cheer up an old cat simply does not work. It upsets the elderly animal's daily rhythm.

Moving house is even more traumatic. The kindest way to treat an elderly cat is therefore to keep as much as possible to the wellzestablished pattern of the day, but with a little physical help where required. The outdoor life of an elderly cat is fraught with dangers. It has reached a point where disputes with younger rivals are nearly always going to end in defeat for the old animal, so a close eye must be kept on any possible persecution. Luckily these changes do not occur until late in the lives of most cats. Human beings suffer from 'old age' for roughly the last third of their lives, but with cats it is usually only the last tenth. So their declining years are mercifully brief. The average lifespan is reckoned to be about ten years. Some authorities put it a little higher, at about twelve years, but it is impossible to be accurate because conditions of catkeeping vary so much. The best rough guide is to say that a domestic cat should live between nine and fifteen years and should only suffer from senile decline for about the final year or so of that span. There have been many arguments about the record longevity of a domestic cat, with some amazing claims being made, some as high as forty-three years. The longest accepted lifespan at present, however, is thirty-six years for a tabby called 'Puss' which lived from 1903 to 1939. This is exceptional and extremely rare. Serious attempts to locate cats over twenty years old, both in Great Britain and the United States, have never managed to turn up more than a mere handful of reliable cases.

One of the reasons why it is difficult to find good records of long-lived cats is that the most carefully kept details are always for the pure-bred animals, which live much shorter lives than the crossbred 'moggies' or mongrels. This is because the prized and carefully recorded pure-bred cats suffer from inbreeding which shortens their lives. The 'badly bred' alley cat, by comparison, enjoys what is called 'hybrid vigour' the improved physical stamina produced by outbreeding. Unfortunately, such cats are less well looked after in most cases, so they, in their turn, suffer more from fighting, neglect and irregular diet. This cuts down their lifespan. The cat with a record-breaking lifespan is therefore most likely to be the one which has a dubious pedigree but is a much loved and protected pet.

For such an animal fifteen to twenty years is not too hopeless a target.

One of the strangest features of cat longevity is that it easily exceeds that of dogs. The record for a dog is twenty-nine years, seven years short of the longest-lived cat. Bearing in mind the fact that larger animals usually live longer than smaller ones, the figures should be reversed, so for their size cats do unusually well. And there is a compensation for those toms that suffer the mutilation of being neutered, for neutered toms have a longer lifespan than 'entire' ones.

The reasons for this, it appears, are that they get involved in fewer damaging brawls with rivals, and also that they are, for some reason, more resistant to infection. One careful study revealed that a neutered tom could expect on average three more years of feline survival than an unneutered one.