When you take your cat to the vet, does your vet have that chart on the wall that translates how old your cat is in CAT YEARS compared to PEOPLE YEARS? And when you go home enlightened and depressed about the true age of your cat, what do you do with that information? Do you use it to spoil the slop out of that kitty, feed him bacon from the table and ice cream off a spoon? Or do you cautiously watch his every suspicious hiccup (YES, they do get hiccups) convinced your feline is on the verge of his eternal doom? Having a 14 year old cat sometimes feels like a monstrous black hole for pet debt for me because I am so in love with this stupid cat I am terrified every time he vomits that he has kidney disease or some form of feline cancer. If he stares at me a second too long I'm wondering if he's telepathically trying to say he's in pain. His eyes are sort of saggy now. One of them wiggles constantly due to a nerve weakness. His meows are kind of weak and listless. Every time we go to the vet there are more blood tests that show increasing symptoms of this or that, but honestly, he's not at death's door. Yet. But wow, the tests do add up, don't they?
The problem is we lost two male cats at 7 years and 9 years. One to diabetes and one to kidney disease. Knowing this is common in male cats is not comforting. When Tigger lost his brother and he went prowling around the house crying all day and using his paw to lift blankets to look under things, it broke my heart. Loving a pet is a delightful thing. But it comes at the cost of the eventual knowledge that you will have to say goodbye to this little precious someone. So when I see the statistic that the average lifespan of a housecat is 14 years and Tigger is now 14.5....you get my drift. My kitty is on borrowed time and I just hate that.
Where's my Cocktail?
So how to enrich his life? Should I try to keep him fit by putting him on a special diet? Get him to exercise more? (It is kind of funny to watch him on the treadmill but can't get him to walk long enough to be any benefit to his health) Spoil him rotten and let him sleep on a silk pillow and eat as many treats as he wants? Teach him Yoga? Send him to Aruba with his best friends and a chaperone? How does one measure the happiness of a cat? He's not like the Cheshire Cat...I don't see a smile on his face so I have to assume he's happy, right? You know that you can't tell by the purring because they do that even when they're in pain.
Organic Kibble?!
I guess the best way to love him is to do the same thing I've been doing every day for the last 14.5 years of his life. Lots of snuggles. Fewer lectures on the missed attempts at peeing in the box. Never take those head butts for granted. Truthfully, he wouldn't have lived this long if I wasn't doing something right...Right?
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