Our cat Suzy, is reaching the age of 19 years old. Any eperience with cats older? She healthy, sleeps alot, and grumpy at times,but just fine. I guess I would be to at her age. jack

-- jack c (injack1@aol.com), March 17, 2002

Answers

Don't have any, but have known many to live 18-25 years.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2222@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

A friend I had growing up had a cat who was 25 when it died. Healthy up to the last day.

Russ

-- (imashortguy@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

Puricilla was 16----when we had to have her put to sleep! We had gotten her as a baby that was dumped & we had to feed her with a doll bottle---when we got her----she never realized she was not a person!!! We still miss her!!

-- Sonda in Ks. (sgbruce@birch.net), March 17, 2002.

I lost a family pet acouple years ago however the vet had to put him down due to chronic urinary problems...he was going on 15. I now have a 9 mo. old kitten that I adopted at 4 weeks as an orphan.... THIS ONE LOVES TO EAT RUBBER BANDS... I have to be so careful..does anyone have a cat that does that or know why. She seems to relish the rubber band. Layne

-- Layne Rielly-Cosgrove (adirondackwoman@westelcom.com), March 17, 2002.

23 years and no major health problems. He was put to sleep by my mother when she had to move and didn't want to stress the cat in his tender old age. No telling how old he would have lived to. We didn't feed anything special, just purina cat chow for 23 years. My mother used to put him outside every day for his "stress test". Maybe that worked, I don't know. He was my cat and I had him from the day he was born.

Susan

-- Susan in MN (nanaboo@paulbunyan.net), March 17, 2002.

Our oldest cat was 19 when she died. Best cat we ever had! If I could find another like her I'd have one today.. Miss Wiggins would sleep most of the time--she ate very well(we change her to canned food because her teeth were worn down so bad)but was very thin. She never became grummpy or mean. She did start to use the bathroom in front of the catbox(she would make it to the box but didn't get in it) so we just put newspaper down around the box.I hope you get to enjoy her for many more years...

-- Debbie T in N.C. (rdtyner@mindspring.com), March 17, 2002.

Here on the farm where we are renting, the grandmother cat of them all is about 15 years old. She is perfectly healthy, though showing her age slightly in her coloring. And sweet as can be. Still turns out kittens far too often.

By the way, how rare is it to have a strain of yellow-tabby female cats?

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

I had a blue point siamese, Blue, who died 4 months short of his 19th birthday. The last year of his life he had arthritis in his hind legs, asthma and died of kidney failure. The kids would take him where ever he needed to go, so he didn't have to worry about not being able to climb. By the way, I think rubber bands probably resemble worms, wiggle when they touch them? Susan

-- Susan (slkolb34@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

Well, after reading these posts our Mocha (going on 14) seems positively juvenile! She is slower (just) and grumpier (somewhat more than just) than when she was a wee thing, but still jumping up on whatever she plans on inhabiting for the next 10 hours at a time. She tends to "camp out" on a spot for several days, coming down to go potty (usually in an inappropriate place - gotta do something about that) and eat, then hopping back up for more power napping. Sometimes I have to poke her just to make sure she hasn't died overnight. Hard to tell otherwise ;). When she's up and about, she seems fine, maybe a little arthritic now and then (better than me, which is embarrassing). The only downsides are that she is scraggly (she's gotten thin, but not dangerously so, and her semi-long hair sticks out all over like Bill the cat) and she smells like she died last year. Took her to the vet - she's fine. Just smelly, scraggly, grumpy and old. Kinda like Keith Richards.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

My feline friend Lacey turned 19 the last week of January 2002. She is a beautiful longhaired calico. I've always been partial to calicos. I brought her home on April 1st, 1983. She was so tiny and so scared, she spent the first couple of days in one of my shoes.

She was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure when she was 7 years old, but a good vet, good food,prayers and lots of love have brought her this far. Her last bloodtest shows her poor old kidneys are slowly deteriorating in function. I expect I'll have to put her to sleep before she is 20. I don't know what I'll do without her, she has been with me nearly half my life. On the other hand, she has had a long and comfortable life and she has been genuinely loved every single day of it. If I can say that when my time comes I guess I'll have done pretty well.

-- debra in ks (windfish@toto.net), March 17, 2002.

I am glad to hear that a cat with my name is 19 years old!!! (Usually it's pigs or something named Suzy! ha!)

anyway, all these stories are encouraging to me because our beloved Biscuit is about four now, and Baxter and Chipper are both three, and all are inside cats. So hopefully they will live long and healthy and peaceful lives!!!!

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

We had a full grown wild cat show up in our barn one winter when feeding cows. She stayed, tamed, we had her spayed, moved w/her, always an outside cat. We had her 20 yrs. curled up & died one summer night. We did shots up to about 17, had to have a couple teeth removed but basically healthy. she, too, was kind of grumpy and let us know if the food bowl was empty!

-- DW (djwallace@sotc.net), March 17, 2002.

Zander is 17, still going strong, Cy was over 20, we had her 18 years she came as a young adult though from a pig barn. She'd had her stepped on and lost an eye, but a vet friend fixed her up and gave her to us. Nasty little witch for 13 years, but spent the last 5 in the house as a grumpy but tolerable old such and such. I guess a pig squashing your head might make you a little touchie. Polly is 16, Winnie and Bullet are 15. Football is 9 or 10 I forget, (great hunting companion that cat)The rest are 1-6 year old babies or barn cats.

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), March 17, 2002.

That should say, "She had her HEAD>/B> stepped on........." sorry

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), March 17, 2002.

A month of late night lambing takes it's toll can ya tell??

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), March 17, 2002.

Circe was 18 years old when she died. Peacefully in her sleep.

-- Terran in VT (homefire@sover.net), March 17, 2002.

DH will be stressed after reading these postings. I have 3 neutered males which are only 2 years old. They constantly leave muddy little paw prints all over everything we own, truck, car, porches, etc. They climb the log walls of our home. Even though they are outside kitties, DH is very tired of them. Now it sounds like they might outlive us!

-- jean from ky. (dandrea@duo-county.com), March 17, 2002.

rubberbands...for teething but is dangerous...can wrap in the intestines...hide the bands.

-- julie (jbritt@ceva.net), March 17, 2002.

Had a tom cat for thirteen years, not old compared to most of these posts, but he was an outdoor/barn cat. I found him a mile in every direction from home, I would be out hiking or riding, and would spot him, you couldn't get near him when he was out, but when he was home, he was as freindly as any of them. He came in one day when he was about 7-8 and looked like he had been kicked in the face, looked awful, I thought that would be the end of him. He wouldn't let me get near him, he went up into the woodshed and laid up for a few days, came out and was his old self again. Sometimes I wouldn't see him for 2-3 days, and every time I figured it was the last, but then, there he was again. He was sickly as a kitten and I didn't think he'd even grow up, and he was almost white, not a good color to hide from predators. Finally he started going downhill, I took him to the vet and had him doped then put down. He deserved an easy out, after helping with the mousing around here for more than a decade. The last of his line is still here and he's going on 10.

-- Mark (mcford@theofficenet.com), March 17, 2002.

21. He was my best friend and I still miss him. What a great cat!

-- sheepish (the_original_sheepish@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

My fine kitty Terry Lee is celebrating her 21st birthday this month. She is in good shape, but has become a little lax about grooming herself and developed some matted fur - luckily, she likes my brushing her. She sleeps upstairs with me and I take her food up there, too, otherwise our golden lab, MayBelle, would eat it all. Terry goes up and down the stairs many times every day. She is not at all crabby, but does have strong (loud) opinions about what time I should get up, that fish-based catfood is not fit to eat, and that golden labs, although large, are vastly inferior creatures.

-- Sandy in MN (onestonefarm@hotmail.com), March 18, 2002.

my sisters lived 27 years jkg

-- jason godsey (jasonkgodsey@hotmail.com), March 18, 2002.

First cat made it to 17.5, second lived to be 21. Both had health problems, including renal failure, in old age. Neither of them got noticeably grumpier in old age. Stiffer, slower, and sleepier, yes. Current cats are 2.5 and 3.5. Hope they last a LONG time! :-)

One of the barn cats lived to be 17 (though most of them had much shorter lifespans), then developed renal failure and died.

-- Joy F {in Southern Wisconsin} (CatFlunky@excite.com), March 18, 2002.

"Fluffy" who came to us at the age of 18, was 22 when we thought she couldn't survive a cross country trip. Left her with the neighbors. Lost track of the neighbors, but the last we heard she was 26! If she is still alive, she is somewhere around 56, but we suspect she has gone to the great litterbox in the sky by now!

-- Brad (homefixer@SacoRiver.net), March 18, 2002.

I adopted one of my hospice patient's 2 cats-one at least 22 (she found him hit by a car 20 years before and took him to the vet, who patched him up and said he said he was at least 2 years old) and then 2 years before coming on Hospice, a kitten came to her door and demanded to be let in. She was concerned the old one wouldn't adjust. He lived under my sons bed for 3 weeks, after first coming to us, and I fed and watered him under the bed. After I had them for 18 months the older one had a series of strokes. We had to hold baby meat food up to his mouth to lap. When he stopped purring, we had him put to sleep. It was September 13. While I watched the horror on Sept 11 I held him on my lap and stroked him and held liquids up to his mouth to drink and he purred-on sept 12 he stopped purring and it took 24 hours to make the arrangemments. The younger one is SO GLAD now to be an only cat...

-- Mitzi Giles (Egiles2@prodigy.net), March 19, 2002.