Cat Senior Care

How to Care For an Aging Cat to Promote Maximum Wellness

How will getting older impact the health of my cat?

If they’re anything like me, that means their back’s going to hurt and they get sore for no good reason at all. Other than that, it’s aging, as everything slows down…kidneys, thyroid conditions, all of those things. I won’t rattle off all the possible complications with aging and cats, but just like us, age catches up with the best of us.

How do a cat’s nutritional needs change as they age?

Fair question. Their nutritional needs are probably less. Why? Because their metabolism is slowing down. They don’t need as many carbs, calories, and probably not as much fat. Maybe they need more fat because they’re getting thinner. It depends. Usually, our old cats are not getting thinner. So there’s that. There’s also the potential for kidney issues. Kidneys are kind of infamous for slowing down, so to speak, as a cat gets older. If that is the case, they need a low protein diet to decrease the workload on those kidneys. So again, it’s little subtle ways like that that can definitely be something that can change as the cat ages.

What are some signs and symptoms that your cat may be slowing down?

There will be some subtleties, as we all know what a kitten does. I mean, they’re bouncing off the walls. They’re jumping on cabinets, sinks, countertops, beds, wherever. An older cat is going to be probably much less likely to do that. Maybe they used to do those things and now they just can’t. It just hurts too much. You will also see things like inadequate grooming. As cats age, if they start to feel stiffer and have arthritis that hurts, or maybe they’re feeling ill from some underlying condition, they’re not going to be too worried about cleaning themselves. So you will start to have matting or that almost clumping of the fur where it’s kind of oily. It’s all from a lack of grooming. So, that’s another sign of aging that can happen.

Weight loss can be another subtle thing that you’ll see, where all of a sudden you might have this nice full cat, not excessively full hopefully, but now you can start to see the ribs. You can see the spine, things like that. Again, it’s a tough thing to answer all possibilities in one question, but it’s those kinds of little subtle things that you need to be looking for as your cat ages to maybe give you the ability to detect if something is wrong early on.

What are some health complications or diseases that are commonly experienced by senior cats?

When I see an older cat somewhere in the 13 to 14, 15-year-old range, the cat will often be seen for what we in veterinary medicine called “ADR”. Ain’t doing right. The things that immediately come to my mind are kidneys, thyroid, i.e. hyperthyroidism, diabetes, or cancer. I’m not saying those are the only four possibilities—very far from it. There are exceptions to every rule. But those four things for me as a veterinarian with 20 plus years experience, those are the things that I see in elderly cats when they come in losing weight…not eating, dehydrated, it’s usually one of those four that I’m looking for.

What kinds of preventative care can help extend the life of my cat?

A good quality diet. And as I mentioned earlier in the kidney example, maybe a specific or prescription good quality diet, depending on what condition might’ve been diagnosed. That’s one. Proper wellness care, doing blood work periodically. Maybe you start doing wellness blood work when they’re middle-aged, and that way, if they do begin to develop some of these conditions, again, I’ll use kidneys as an example because it’s so common in cats, the earlier you can detect that the better outcome that you can potentially have moving forward or long-term. So those kinds of things are what I think can help benefit the life of a cat.

Why are wellness exams and regular checkups important for senior cats?

For the reason I just mentioned. The whole reason for wellness exams is to try to catch something early before the cat shows you any clinical signs. The chances of you being able to successfully treat a cat in early renal failure are so much better. All right, let me approach it another way. So if they come in for a regular wellness exam, vaccines, that kind of thing, we do blood work and we realize that their BUN and SDMA, or maybe just SDMA, which is one of the earliest, most sensitive indicators of kidney function, maybe just that’s elevated. I will almost guarantee you that that cat will have no clinical signs if only the SDMA is elevated, but it doesn’t lie to you. It’s elevated for a reason because it is the most sensitive indicator of early renal impairment. So what can we do?

We can absolutely put that cat on a low protein diet, maybe increase water intake. Those kinds of things are what we’re going to do in that stage. Fast forward six or eight months, maybe a year, maybe even longer than that, but fast forward for somebody that didn’t do that with their cat. And now their cat is vomiting, dehydrated, and doesn’t want to eat. We get them in, we pull blood work and now it’s BUN, creatinine, phosphorus, SDMA, every kidney marker is elevated, and sometimes through the roof elevated. That’s a lot harder to bring them back from that point.

You can try IV fluids. You can try diets, you can try supplements. You can try all these things, but you might not ever get them back to a normal, happy quality of life for lack of a better word. But if we would’ve caught it much earlier at the very beginning, the “tip of the iceberg”, if you will, the potential outcome would have been completely different.

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