The Senior Cat Years | Cat Ages and Stages

before we get into it today don't forget if you haven't already subscribe to this channel it's great you know that way you know when new videos are coming especially if you hit that little bell that makes sure that every cater day sometimes without fail we have the premiere of a new video this way you'll know when the things are coming and also other 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

Channel: Jackson Galaxy

Views: 291,427

Keywords: Senior Cat Years, jackson galaxy videos, senior cat, senior cat care, senior cat wellness, cat years to human years, senior cat needs, cat stages of life, adopting a senior cat, senior cats, caring for senior cats, senior cats behavior, senior cats diet, feeding senior cats, senior cat care tips, senior cats behavior changes, senior cat jackson galaxy, cat health, senior cat food, elder cat care, older cat care, how to care for senior cats, jackson galaxy, cat behavior

Id: GRxUND0eb0U

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021