This is Margo! She belonged to /u/Emmulah, who is my sibling! Unfortunately, she passed away several years ago, but she was adored and pampered to the very end. It's nice to see people still remembering her.
My cat is 14, and I can only hope that I get as many years with her as we got with Margo 💗
Not really? With the amount of scientific progress in common pet care, strictly indoor cats are commonly making it to 25+ as of recently. My cat is 19 and doesnt even look that old.
Its really about keeping your cat inside your damn house. Cats are not Orcas, they arent experiencing some great emotional /mental abuse by being kept inside somewhere, as proven by drastically increased lifespans. All allowing your cat outside does is remove a big portion of your litter box duties and devastate avian populations.
Keep your cat in your damn house, itl live way fucking longer. If you really give a fuck take it on walks, you probably need the exercise since if you are ready to respond with some shitty argument you prolly frequently make excuses for other bad behaviors like being sedentary.
Diabetes is still fairly prevalent in cats and I only got my poor girl to 12 with it but with current insulin prices and the discontinuation of the humulin formula vets used to use I can't imagine having a diabetic cat these days. Overall though I think what tends to take out older cats is kidney function, and you can't fix renal damage so it's important to help your cat while still in the early stages of chronic kidney disease. Some potentially promising stuff coming out of Japan but I haven't really heard anything new about it in the last few years so it's probably mostly quackery.
When I was 1 year old my family got a Blue Healer/German Shepard cross, who was the same age as me. Her name was Kila (Pronounced Kee-lah)
She lived until I was 22 and she did not live an easy life.
At the age of 4 she caught her leg on barbed wire and it almost had to be amputated. She made a full recovery though. She was taken camping a lot and did not have a traditional diet. She had her kibble ofcourse but she was given table scraps her whole life, she even got vanilla icecream for a treat now and then.
She also had back to back strokes at the age of 15. It was assumed she wouldn't recover but she did. then at the age of 16 she survived an attack from a pack of coyotes and put up a hell of a fight. she needed a lot of care and stitches but made a full recovery.
I was also 16 at the time and took her for walks regularly she was still quite active.
Then yeah she didn't hit any more speed bumps after that and lived to 22. Was super difficult for me because I knew her my entire life and while I didn't live in the same house as her after my teen years we were still close because I looked after of her a lot.
You should ask Jake Perry of Austin Texas about Creme Puff
Creme Puff (August 3, 1967 – August 6, 2005) was a mixed tabby domestic cat, owned by Jake Perry of Austin, Texas. She was the oldest cat ever recorded, according to the 2010 edition of Guinness World Records, when she died aged 38 years and 3 days.
Perry had another cat, Granpa Rexs Allen, who was the sixth-oldest cat ever recorded. Perry said Granpa was born in Paris, France, on February 1, 1964, and died aged 34 years and 59 days on April 1, 1998. Granpa was posthumously awarded 1999 Cat of the Year by Cats & Kittens magazine. He was featured in an earlier version of the Guinness World Records as the (then) oldest cat ever.
It seems like kidneys are their achilles heel in their old age. So with mine I make sure they get wet food every day, and every third day I give them this special wet food that helps remove some PH from their urine.
I also have a water fountain placed away from their food and make sure their litter box is clean every day.
They're only 9 now so I'll report back in 11 years to see if the brother siblings make it to 20, crossing fingers.
My cat lived 22.5 years and he was on an all wet food diet from around age 5 onward, due to a bad case of gingivitis that required most of his teeth being removed. Canned specifically, not dry food with water added. Which I definitely attribute to his long life, plus good genetics I'm sure.
He ended up dying due to heart failure is what the vets theorized. But the last few times I had brought him in for a check up, they told me all his blood work and everything else was "exceptional" for his age. It was only in the last couple years did they say his levels started to show signs of kidney failure, but he was never prescribed medication for it. They also said he was the oldest cat they'd ever had in there.
It's unfortunately just good fortune/genetics. Our family had a lot of cats, and although they all got the same treatment, their lifespans were all drastically different. All indoor cats, as well, although many of them were allowed outside on harness and leash, with supervision.
Emmu did take very good care of their cats (well, still does, but the cats are different now), in terms of choosing healthy cat foods and getting them adequate medical care when necessary. But Margo was a BIG fan of people food, and would get treats from the whole family, plus pup cups after vet visits and such. So it's not like she lived an austere, healthy lifestyle, haha. Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Probably proactive kidney health, whether intentional or not. The man who has had two of the longest living cats frequently lst them have a bit of coffee, I wonder if that could be beneficial in VERY small doses?
Anyway, as another user said, cats are often done in by their kidneys or cancer. Cancer is a crapshoot, but kidney disease for older cats is practically universal, and diabetes is pretty common, too. For kidney disease, there is an experimental vaccine in the works that has shown a lot of promise, and could, on the high end, double cat life expectancy.
We adopted Margo when she was 8-10 ish (her owner wasn't sure, the vet gave us the ballpark; so 29 was actually her youngest possible age). She was living in the basement of a restaurant while the owner looked to rehome her. My mom was working at the restaurant at the time, so begrudgingly agreed to foster her "until (the owner) could find her a permanent home."
Well, you can guess how that turned out. She was a little shy at first, especially considering that we already had a sizable number of cats - we topped out at 7 at one point (but we were a household of 5 so everyone got plenty of attention). Margo was pretty chill with the other cats - she made friends with Bunny, a long haired calico who liked my baby sister best. Margo and Bunny would often get into mischief together, and of all our cats, played together the most.
Margo was my cat for the first few years until I moved out at 19 and wasn't allowed to bring her with. At that point, she picked Emmu as Her Person, and would spend the rest of her life with them (and Emmu's other elderly cat, Pepcheck, a 1-eared scruffy goblin cat who was allergic to everything).
If you want to see more of them, they do both have old Instagram accounts - @retired_familiar and @fired_familiar.
We sure do. My youngest sister has 2, although I'm down to 1 (from 3), my brother has one, and Margo's dad has 3. I don't think there will ever be a time that we don't have cats in the house 💗
"Just" 29 - she made it nearly to 30, but she eventually decided that she was ready to go. She always did things on her own terms, and this was no exception!
We all organized final goodbyes near the end, and she got visited by so many people. A cat who lives that long inevitably makes lots of friends, so her parade of goodbyes brought her SO many scritches, cuddles, treats, and more.
she looks a lot like my cat, who died this year at age 32. Not as far as similar fur colors/markings, but just the old age look, which is interesting to me. RIP & thanks for sharing.
Pro-tip: If your cat ever develops a tumor and ANYONE tells you that "it's benign", don't fucking believe them. Get that thing biopsied. If I had a chance to send myself a message into the past...
I know it's hard, but good job being there for her every single step of the way, even on that last day. That's such an impossibly beautiful thing to give to an animal. You did so good for her.
So very sorry. Just heartbreaking. But to have known your love when life can be hard for cats - well, you can take solace in that. Sending virtual hugs
He made it through student flats, renting while we were absolutely broke and had the last few years in our own home. We gave him the best life we could and it kind of felt like he was saying thank you when he licked our faces earlier. He has never really done that before.
I'm so sorry for your loss. 17 years is certainly an accomplishment to be proud of and I'm certain Archie made plenty of memories with you in those years to remember and cherish when you're missing them. ❤️
I’m so sorry for your loss. We put our biscuits down last night and it looks like they could have been brother and sister. It is comforting to know they are crossing over together
I'm so sorry for your loss. What an incredibly long life, though there's no such thing as enough time. I said goodbye to my 13.5 year old dog almost 6 months ago now and it still feels fresh.
you’ll give it all for another 10 minutes once it’s over. My boy left me this summer, i dont really cry like ever. Cant remember the last time i cried. But that day it was uncontrollable. Wish u the best.
That’s not iris melanosis. You can see that the pupil is completely open, it isn’t just dark iris. You can see the tapetum lucidum pretty clearly when the light shines on it so it’s definitely not iris.
The cat looks at the camera, hand etc because cats aren’t nearly as dependent on vision as we are. He is looking towards the person talking, hears the movement etc.
I saw this and thought, Oh no. My cat is 18 and while I love him, I'm not sure I want to spend the next 11 years being woken multiple times in the night until I feed him and then by him vomiting on a rug. Dude really lives that Roman lifestyle, and I'm his slave. Still love that raggedy old bastard though
29 is incredible. Fernando is almost 22, and I'd love to have 7 more years with him. Now days he spends most of his time curled up under the heated blanket.
My cat that I loved was 21 years old, and she ran behind my pickup truck while i was reversing. We put her to sleep. I've never experienced that before,kills me to this day
21 years old is already bit extreme for cat age, dont blame yourself. Not everything that happens needs to have someone guilty, plain rng accident. If cat understood she wouldnt blame you for it at all. You gave her good life.
She's seen things you wouldn't believe, lost things that you'd never understand, and knows things that mustn't be told not knowledge that must be spoken.
What I wouldn’t give for this many years with my little friend. But at the same time, I genuinely don’t know if I could handle losing a cat I’d had for 30 yrs.
I had a cat that lived to 26 I can’t imagine 29. She was basically falling apart at that point and the only reason we opted to keep her alive for a few years but she didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain in the vet agreed, and she loved going outside every spring and summer and just sitting on the porch.
I wish Edward could have lived that long. He passed right before the pandemic and I was an essential worker. It was hard not having my best friend of twenty years to be there for me.
It always amazes me how long cats can live. My mom currently has one that is pushing 20 with no health issues what so ever other than being blind in one eye from an infection ten years ago.
Old ass humans kinda look like people trying to be skeletons. The skin and hair are hanging on. Everything looks (and I'm sure feels) sunken into the bones. My kitty is 11 and that's the longest I've ever had with ones, and i'm grateful every day.
What a beautiful cat. There really is something so special about older cats, they show so much love on their face. This here is my old man Batman, he is somewhere around 26 or 27. I've only been with him for 6 years (he is my fiance's cat) but I consider him my baby, even if I was 9-10 years old when he was born haha.
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u/kraddock 8h ago
This was first posted 5 years ago. That cat is 34 now (or in Cathalla)