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Sweet 16

Just one year ago today I wrote about Mike, the cat's, 15th birthday making today his 16th in cat years or 80 in human years.


My new camera is fast enough I can take a photo of him actually looking at me.

I was away for about three weeks recently and noticed some differences in him when I returned.

  • He is walking with an ever so slight limp in his left rear hip sometimes more pronounced than others.  You have to be paying very close attention because cats are notorious in not showing when they are ill.  I suspect this is arthritis, or at least, it seems to look like the type of walk I have seen in those suffering from arthritis.  This limp is most pronounced when we take stairs together throughout the house.
  • Paul hadn't brushed him while I was away and it showed.  Older cats, according to the reading I have done, aren't as efficient at grooming themselves as younger cats.  I think I've brushed half a cat of fur off him after my return.  And Mike, he so loves the attention brushing brings to him.  I am not particularly gentle with this process and he seems to like the challenge of standing upright as I brush, brush, brush away the excesses.  Mike seems so proud of himself when I finish, or am I merely projecting?
  • We have this dirty secret about Mike.  He uses a toilet as his source for drinking water.  I know sort of disgusting and ingenious all wrapped up together.  We have to instruct cat sitters to be sure to flush the toilets throughout the house while we are away, something I am sure makes them cringe.  Yesterday Mike was yowling at me for most of the forenoon and I couldn't figure out what the problem was.  I let him outside, cleaned the litter box, made sure he had plenty of food, brushed him until the tool came off his back clean and he still continued to yowl.  (Apparently yowling is another characteristic of an older cat.)  So to get away I took a shower.  While there Mike started licking the outside of the glass shower door and it hit me.  He could not, at least yesterday, position himself over the toilet to get a drink (maybe the arthritis in the hip was flaring up).  So I put down a ramekin of water, he drank and remained quiet for the rest of the day.  Perhaps it is time we give him water like normal cat owners do, from a vessel other than a toilet.
  • What has not yet changed is his appetite.  He remains a good eater, still loving his Purina Cat Chow.  I know some of you might be gasping about what we feed him too, trust me it is his choice not ours.  During our 16 years together we have tried countless wet and other kinds of dry cat food on him.  All have had to be given away because he won't touch it.  Mike is fussy about his food, in fact when he was younger the breeder took him to a cat show.  She wouldn't take the Purina Cat Chow I had put in a container for him.  She intended to feed him one of the higher quality dry cat foods that she was sure he'd eat.  On day three of their being together she was forced, much to her own shock, to go buy a bag of the Cat Chow because Mike had not eaten in three days.  He's still like that.
In his King of the Beast pose
I haven't yet figured out how we will celebrate this year but it will indeed include the water off a can of tuna, about the only human food he'll eat.  Perhaps a drop or two of red wine (he does seem to like it) are in order as well.

It is hard to see the characteristics in Mike's physicality that I also notice in my own aging body.  We are lucky he remains cognitively sound; no forgetting where the litter box is or day-long yowling, yet.  This little guy has been such a great companion over the years.  Perhaps his 16th birthday isn't so sweet for him, but it sure is for me!

That isn't fat on his belly, really it isn't.  It is a primordial pouch, typical in lions and tigers.

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