before we get into it today don't forget if you haven't already subscribe to this channel
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information that i just put out to subscribers and now let's get into today's topic the ages
and stages of a cat's life part three
hello my cat friends hello cat loving world it is uh your cat daddy jackson galaxy today
we continue uh with our series on the ages and stages of a cat's life and now it really
depends on who you talk to in terms of when we start defining cats as older i tend to
go with double digits at 10 years old then we're getting into the senior age now here's
the funny thing if you look at the human cat calculator here 10 years old equals about
56 human years people at the time of this taping i am 55 years old i do not want to
think of myself as a senior at 56. that said i'll try not to bring my own personal preferences
into this whole shebang but let's just say at the age of 11 cats are at about 60 years
old so you know into the double digits we can say and then we get up to depending on
who he asks geriatric or what i would like to refer to as super seniors because super
seniors makes them also sound like superheroes the human cat calculator gets kind of crazy
the 20 years old were up at around 100 years and you know that said we do have cats living
their best lives into their 20s well into their 20s anybody who knows me knows that
i had my companion valoria in my life until she was 26. she didn't act like 130 years
old or whatever that is at that point i mean when valoria passed i was getting texts from
you guys some of them saying no i've got a 28 year old i mean at some point this calculator
means nothing i mean at some point we might as well go to a cat tortoise calculator below
all this i think is the good news which is that cats are living longer lives if you average
it out it's a little over 15 years that means that maybe life expectancy starts at 11. but
the fact is that it was much lower and and part of the reason for that is we are taking
better care of our cats we're going to the vet more often we're being a little proactive
we're making sure that we're noticing different changes in our cats our nutritional care is
better other factors are spayed and neuter cats live longer than those that are intact
i mean we're not dealing with things like testicular or ovarian cancer every time your
female cat goes into heat their chances of ovarian cancer go up three times every single
time so those things are not a factor also whether your cat is indoor outdoor we'll play
into it i know you guys we've got another video on this topic i don't want to go into
it too much but the fact is that if a cat is outdoors only their life expectancy is
only two to five years that's the truth that's that's science right there there's plenty
of you guys out there like well my cat has been outdoors most of his life and he's 16
okay you know statistical outliers but uh not necessarily reflective of the overall
so these are all reasons why our cats are living longer lives so what i want to talk
about today is what to expect as they get older and what we have to do for them in order
to make sure they live their best and longest life at the exact same time so what i want
to start out with are the the most common things to expect as your cat gets older creaky
bones happens i mean arthritis happens just general just sort of ouch it hurts when i
walk happens there was a study done and this was back in the 90s at a teaching hospital
veterinary teaching hospital where it turned out that like 80 percent of cats over the
age of 10 had signs of arthritis we just never paid attention to it even vets will cop to
the fact that they were looking for it because cats hide pain well out in the wild they get
predated upon constantly if they show weakness it's trouble suddenly you notice that your
your cat who's now in his senior years isn't jumping up on the bed anymore or they're up
on the bed and then they really just think about it 10 times before they jump down from
the bed because that that pressure of jumping down and hitting the ground hurts just about
as much if not more than you know what you got to do to jump up they're going to not
groom themselves as often as they used to maybe they can't reach back there or it's
just not happening because they're just slowing down more than anything as our guys get into
the senior years and as they get slower and maybe they'll avoid certain things that they
didn't avoid before maybe they're feeling stressed more than they were before and we
know very well that stress in older animals is much more likely to be manifested in physical
dis-ease we know this as well you guys know that if you're working 12-hour shifts and
you've worked a six-day week and that goes on for a couple of months or there's something
really really stressful going on in your life anything from the end of a relationship to
you moving or whatever all of a sudden you got a cold so whether it's those kind of things
or a general decline in visual and hearing acuity we see more signs of reduced cognitive
ability or dementia these are all things that could happen and again i've seen plenty of
cats who they're 17 years old and you would think they were eight so i don't want you
guys to get scared of your cat aging just like with us aging is not a disease there
are of course a lot of things that can happen along the way but that's what i'm here for
i am here to help you get ahead of that curve just a little bit your relationship with your
veterinarian your senior is key you need to be able to trust your vet go to them when
you feel like you need to ask questions when you feel like you need to get ahead of the
curve a little bit but the underlying thing here is that you have to be your cat's best
advocate you have to advocate you have to not be afraid of asking those questions of
running your cat into the vet even if it seems like a small thing i'm not saying to overdo
it i know that that veterinary care costs quite a bit of money even when you have pet
insurance at the end of the day it's worth it it's worth it to know the symptoms that
you should be looking for and it's worth it to know what you can do ahead of time so a
great example is dental care having regular dentals through the prime and matured stages
of their life will help so that when they get to the senior phase you're not gonna have
to make that consistent decision am i gonna put them under anesthesia to to have a dental
done even though we've gotten really good at that if you wait until they are seniors
to start taking care of their teeth that's when things can happen having a senior panel
done once a year i think is crucial just regular lab works done having a urinalysis done having
a tip to tail feel around all of these things are really really important as they age paying
for the proactive care beats paying for what comes uh if if you don't take care of it another
thing that you should really take care of is their both hydration and nutrition in my
perfect world those things are intertwined so that if you're feeding them a wet diet
or a raw diet then you have to worry a lot less about them drinking about 75 percent
of a cat's natural hydration comes from their food one hint i got for you is make sure that
your wet food is at room temperature most cats don't like cold food but as they get
older their tolerance for that goes even lower another thing you can do is make your wet
food into a bit of a stew add some warm water to it and that way you know they're getting
proper hydration
one thing to look for is something called hyperthyroidism in my experience i don't usually
see hyperthyroidism commonly until they get into their senior stage but maybe towards
the end of the mature stage they'll be ravenous all the time and yet they'll lose weight that's
because hyperthyroidism is almost like being hooked up to as my good friend dr gene hobie
would say a caffeine iv drip they're going to be more hungry more vocal more active you're
like oh my god my 16 year old's like running laps around the house and they're losing weight
that's when you take a look at that so just as we're taking a look at symptoms and things
to start looking for one of the things i want you to be aware of is we talked earlier about
arthritis and just general creakiness well that's when you start to recatify your house
it's important for you to adapt for them because your cats aren't going to do it like i said
they might not jump on the bed or off the bed anymore if they enjoy being on the bed
then what you would do is you would get them pet stairs or ramps and that way we can teach
them how to use it of course you do that with treats you sort of just guide them up and
if they're food motivated they're gonna get up there but the same thing goes for their
other favorite sunny spots for instance because of course older cats become even more like
heat misers than younger cats right there they're less likely they have usually less
body fat and they can't regulate their internal temperatures as well as their younger counterparts
so getting them access to the sun that's great you know so they used to love being up in
the window either help them get up to that windowsill or bring the not mountain to muhammad
so to speak you know and bring down the level sunny spots still hit the floor so let's give
them more blankets more beds there are heated beds that are just wonderful and almost every
senior cat i know it just sort of gravitates towards those heated beds over time because
it's the bomb man it's a great place to be if you're constantly a little chilly and it
helps to warm up the joints as well ramps are your friends stairs are their friend making
sure if they're getting wobbly when they walk that you have literal guard rails on these
things if they're going to get up on things you've got to make sure that they're not going
to slip you want to make sure that the things they like to get up to have either you know
sticky substances or rugs on them or something so that your your senior cat and your super
senior are not having to navigate hardwood floors linoleum things like that because they
don't have the the muscle strength to keep everything upright or again this is a lot
of cats not all of them by any stretch of the imagination and finally we have talked
about all kinds of things from dental exams to nutrition to catification but the last
thing i want to talk about is making sure that their stress level is managed as i mentioned
before stress can lead to physical issues and besides that with the the loss of certain
senses and acuity comes just a little bit of an underlying stress that you especially
if their world changes try to keep a routine try to keep their routine as best you can
a cat who is losing their their vision wants to be able to navigate in the way they're
used to cat who's losing their hearing same thing they want to make sure they can see
things that are coming at them try not to rearrange everything in your life be very
mindful if you're going to move if new people are coming in and out of the house that you
introduce them properly and you keep your cat's stress managed and i will tell you this
i hope i don't need to but you know if i didn't need to then why would i tell you don't bring
in a kitten because you think that your senior cat needs to be somehow rejuvenated you're
just going to stress them out and make them tired but should you not bring in another
cat during your cat's senior years i'm not saying that at all bring in another senior
bring in somebody who matches their energy level i think subliminally sometimes we tend
to bring in kittens because as we're reminded of the mortality of our cats and then of course
ourselves we want to bring in youthful energy just don't do it um i think it really just
increases their stress level in a great way and that's really it managing stress is a
a big thing for you guys to think about now listen postscript to all of this information
and the information i'm giving you in the other videos when it comes to talking about
this final live stage seniors and super seniors or geriatrics and cats don't be afraid of
the age of your cat what i've been saying here is that we have the ability to get ahead
of the aging game to the best of of our technological capabilities uh with our cats in a way that
we never could before so i'm not giving you all this information because i'm like oh it's
gonna get bad it's gonna get bad from here so just watch out i'm not doing that i think
that the senior years can be incredibly gratifying and and some of my fondest memories of the
cats i've shared my life with and continue to are in their senior years when when for
some reason our relationship becomes more dear to us and the time we spend together
and and all this other stuff it just becomes part of life you know and part of your life
with them part of the way you advocate and parent to your senior cat you should adopt
a senior cat i'm telling you those guys they know how to give love man a cat that has been
through the rescue system at a senior age they're like oh this is good this is good
bring on the retirement years i'm good you know um but but don't shy away from either
adopting a senior or living your best life with your senior cat that's what this is all
for not as this dire warning that things are gonna get worse i'd love to mention to you
guys that i do make some products geared towards seniors that i'm really proud of i mean of
course you know as joint sage you want to look at glucosamine chondroitin compounds
acupuncture things like that and just as i've talked about a little extra added heat for
to lube up those joints a little bit uh but there's also what happens to your cat as they
get older that's stress that also accompanies physical problems so that's why i make flower
essence formulas and i have one called graceful aging which is just about perfect for this
thing and there's another one called stress stopper so as you're bringing in things that
could potentially be stressful for your cat you can add that on board and finally one
of the newest products that we have that i'm really really proud of is we now make a liquid
b12 supplement and it is uh the only as far as i know non-synthetic vitamin b12 in a liquid
form that you can give your cats and vitamin b12 is really great for your senior cat i
mean all the way around i give it to my guys i have for years but now we have a great product
vitamin b12 for cats all right that's it my friends we have now gone through all of the
ages and stages of a cat's life obviously there's no way i could cover everything i
tried and if you have not seen those first two videos about kitten hood and the teenage
stage and the prime stage and the mature stage go back and look at it because it's always
good to know you know what to expect and what's normal what's maybe not so normal as your
cats get older and live their best life so now of course you know that i want to do videos
that you want to see so that's what the comments are for down in the comments below ask me
questions say jackson you know i i don't know what i'm looking at here what am i looking
at here maybe i can tell you maybe i can't you know i'm not the cat no all oh wait a
minute that's why you watch this right forget it anyway you guys until next time take care
of the seniors in your life including yourself man i think i need to go get a massage all
light all love and all cat mojo tia is there a cat who give me a massage i feel like i've
earned that [Music]
[Music] meow