How to Care For an Aging Cat to Promote Maximum Wellness

I get asked this question probably more than anything else is—how do you know what their quality of life is? And I think the best way I can answer it is, does your cat still do the things that they’ve always enjoyed doing? Does your cat still do the things that made them your cat, for lack of a better way to put it? It’s different for every animal. Some cats enjoy eating, some enjoy chasing toys, some enjoy chasing a laser, and some like to sit at a window and wish they could chase the sparrows and squirrels outside. Whatever it is, can your animals still enjoy the day-to-day routines that are its life?

Do they still behave the same way? Do they still get excited about the same things? If those things happen, then I would say that animal probably still has a fair quality of life. There are variations with everything, of course, but that’s probably the most tangible message that I try to convey to people. They’re going to lose weight as they age. They’re perhaps not going to eat as much. Maybe they drink a little more. Those are all factors as well, but at the end of the day when we’re making an end-of-life decision, it’s about whether they can still do the things that they’ve always enjoyed doing.

That’s a tricky one to answer. So I will simply say this. I’m going to focus on the literal act of dying. And I know that’s grim, but if this question is intended to cover things such as maybe my cat is passing away at my home now with me, I would expect to see things like a cat that is no longer responsive, number one. They’re usually laterally recumbent laying on their side, but you can’t rouse them. They’re breathing but you can’t rouse them. They don’t respond if you call their name. There may be what’s called a palpebral reflex. You can touch by their eye and they should blink just like we should but they don’t. You start seeing a diminished or a lack of a palpebral reflex, things like that.

Sometimes severe dehydration will be evident if can pick up their skin and they have a very prolonged skin tint. That’s not an end of life sign, but most cats that are at that point usually are going to be severely dehydrated. And then I would think the last, and I mean the very last that you may see (hopefully you won’t see it at home) would be what we call agonal breathing. That is anytime an animal passes, whether they’re passing on their own or if that’s something that we’ve assisted them with, oftentimes they will take to take these very, very deep breaths right at the end as they’re passing. Again, a grim topic but these are some of the things that you would be looking for at the absolute in stages of life.

Thankfully, that’s not as grim of a question to answer. So pain can be as simple as vocalization. It can be carrying their body posture differently. If it’s arthritic type pain, they will be carrying themselves differently. Maybe they’re hunched back. Maybe they’re walking with real short steps because it hurts to walk. Maybe it’s that you go to pick them up or you touch them in a certain area, and they either vocalize or they try to bite you or something like that. If they have a tender or painful spot, they’re going to lick or bite at that area a lot because it hurts and they can’t figure out why, and they don’t understand it. So they just want to lick and lick and lick or bite at that area.

That’s truly a good question. And I’ll be honest with you. One that I had to look up myself to get the answer, but so the way I know it now, and the way I think of it is this. Palliative care is when you were trying to control the pain or suffering of an animal, but there is still hope of a recovery or a cure, whereas hospice care is still the ultimate goal is to try to make an animal comfortable, to remove whatever pain and suffering that cat might be going through. But with hospice care, typically there is no chance of a resolution or a cure. You have reached the end of your treatment options, and you’re just trying to make the cat comfortable until they pass or can be put down.

Euthanasia would be us as veterinarians easing the passing of said cat, or maybe not easing, but causing the passing. There are drugs that we use injectably that, there’s no polite way to put it, but that will stop the heart of a cat. And obviously in their life, that way it’s very humane. It’s very quick. It’s very peaceful. It is quite literally an overdose of an anesthetic. So there’s no pain involved with it. It’s just, again, when we know that an animal (a cat in this case) is at the end of their life and there’s nothing else we can do, there’s no point in allowing that animal to suffer and to die a long, drawn-out, painful death. There’s no point in that at all. So it’s our responsibility as veterinarians to ease that suffering. And that’s how it’s done.

I get asked that one every now and then as well. The simple answer is, no. I can’t really justify a reason for me to say that’s better. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I can count maybe not on one hand, but probably on two hands, how many times an animal has died peacefully on their own at home. It just doesn’t happen very often. They fight. They hang on. They just don’t let go the way that we would want them to let go. So oftentimes it stinks, but we as veterinarians and sometimes you as owners have to make that hard decision for them. I encourage people to think of it not as being cruel because I, too, struggle with that.

What gives me the right to do that? What gives me the power and the right to decide if an animal lives or dies? It’s a weird power to yield, but I’ve come to realize that it’s the last bit of love that we can give them. It really is. When you know that the end is there, there’s nothing else you can offer and there’s nothing that’s going to make this animal turn around. Isn’t it kinder to let them go with dignity, pain-free, in a controlled, loving setting where their owner can be right there with them, holding them, talking to them? I would like to go that way.

I hope that that can be done for me one day, and I know it can’t, but who wouldn’t want to pass that way in that situation. So, yeah. I think it is much more feasible and humane for the animal to ease them in their passing, as opposed to drawing it out and just waiting and waiting and waiting for them to pass at home.