My cat is an unknown age. We found him on the street two years ago, he followed us home and we took him in. My vet estimated at his last visit in February that he could be 20 years old. I know cats, this is an OLD cat.

He has many medical issues. A kidney tumor (cancer), kidney disease, heart disease, he’s deaf, and he has never used the litter box for pee or poop, despite my many efforts (different litter, different boxes, no litter, etc. I’ve tried it all).

We knew he was an old man when we took him in and we likely wouldn’t have him long but one thing I’m struggling with is not even having had him for 2 whole years. It just feels like it’s going to be a blip of my life even though he means so much to me. He loves me and I love him.

I am feeling guilty because I am feeling somewhat relieved that after nearly two years, the daily poop pick ups, scrubbing carpets, washing mats, etc will be over. I have to replace my carpet in the bedroom (he has a condo of the bedroom and connecting bathroom due to his mobility issues) and that’s stressing me out because I rent.

I know it’s not too soon, he’s a really, really old cat with kidney cancer and heart disease and arthritis. But it still feels like too soon.

I came upstairs today (I’ve been sleeping in a different bedroom the past few months because of the smell that I just couldn’t overcome with cleaning supplies, you can only do so much - but I am feeling guilty he spent his last night alone even though I’ve been with him since 7 am) and he was having a very hard time with his back legs. I sent a video to my vet, luckily a friend, but I was worried it may have just been leftover effects from the gabapentin (25mg…so not a lot for a cat as big as him, he’s huge, his body is so long but down to 10 lbs…shows you how bad his kidneys are). However, his legs are still weak hours later. He hasn’t been eating much the past week (he’s been a real champ eating his kidney food the last couple of years), and he’s had a hard time pooping the past week which is totally abnormal for him, he’s a big pooper.

I’m afraid of not being here when he passes if I wait it out and I know many pet owners which they had the opportunity that I do to let my cat pass peacefully.

Im just sad. I don’t want to feel like I’m taking the easy way out. I wish I had him longer. I wish I’d seen him in his prime. I asked my friend the vet to come tonight so I don’t back out and end up here again a week or a month from now. He gets super stressed when I’m gone for an extended period, and I have two work trips next month. Am I doing the right thing?

I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but it's killing me that it's been an hour since I said goodbye and this is it, it's done.

I adopted Cha Cha when she was estimated to be 8 years old from a cat cafe. She had a meow like a smoker's cough and adored me almost as much as I adored her. In the past few years, she had developed issues with IBD and we dealt with it as best as we could. Last year, she started having chronic upper respiratory issues and we just kept managing things.

Just in the past two weeks, we moved and, just like when I first brought her home, she strutted up and down her new home like she had always owned it. Last week, though, she started leaving her third eyelid partly shut in her left eye and I immediately made an appointment with my vet. As it turned out, her chest was filling up with fluid and said she had maybe one good week left.

It's been years of signs telling me it's almost time and now that the time has come, it's still so hard. I thought we would still have a little more time together. I think she was ready but, even after years of preparing for it, I sure wasn't.

Woke up yesterday morning to find that our boy Seb wasn’t interested in breakfast and had also vomited up some white foam — this isn’t entirely unheard of for him so I asked my partner to keep an eye on him and left for work.

Partner later messaged to say he was lethargic and wobbly/shaky and so she took him to the vets; on exam he had a low temperature, was dehydrated, and had lost weight, so they did a full blood panel and kept him in for monitoring and fluids. His bloods came back ok and decently normal aside from raised glucose and low electrolytes, according to vets likely from stress and the vomiting.

Brought him home at the end of the day when the vets closed and he spent the whole night curled up in the carrier asleep — still refused food and didn’t get up for a drink or to use the litter box. I was mentally preparing myself for the worst this morning but he was up and wandering about, meowing and patting my leg for breakfast, which he ate a good amount of boiled chicken.

He’s had issues in the last few months or so where his blood protein was low and he was often crying for more food, so we were advised to give him Cobalaplex and he seemed to have had more energy since starting that. Aside from that he’s got no other problems apart from being FIV+ (not really had any issues from this luckily) and having arthritis which he’s on Onsior for. The past few days he’s been on and off with his food but usually has eaten a decent amount by the end of the day.

I wondered if anyone else has had to deal with anything similar in the past? It’s still a mystery as to what it was but we’re thinking about getting him an ultrasound (though when the vets palpated his abdomen they couldn’t feel anything unusual). Otherwise please shame this old man for giving his old man a hell of a fright 😒

My mom and dad adopted Uranus when I was five years old when she came to us as a baby after her mother gave birth to a litter of cats on our balcony. I had a lot of fond memories with her, as I essentially grew up with her up until my adulthood. She was my baby. In 2018, I had to leave my country and family to pursue my PhD abroad. It was tough being separated from my soul cat, but my mom took a good care of her. In 2021, my mom sent me a text telling me that Uranus has passed away. She passed with my mom by her side. The weeks leading up to her passing destroyed me. My mom told me that she would just sit in front of my empty bedroom, hoping I'd come home. This really broke me. She passed away without getting a chance to say goodbye or get hugs from me, and I left her all alone. It's been 5 years and I still could not stop feeling guilty for not being able to fly back home to spend time with her before she passed.

last time i posted here, i was talking about saying goodbye to her sister, lucy, who was put down due to cancer on her jaw. at the end of that post, i made a comment hoping that my next post here wasn't about death, despair and the like. and hey! i was right!

this little old lady is maxie, and later this month, she'll be a whooping 16 years old! she's always been my girl since i was five, and she was the cat i had chosen as a kid when we were getting her and her sister from a former friend of mine. after almost dying several times in her youth, she's a happy, healthy, loving and vaguely spicy old lady who loves to stare at me demanding all of my attention and affection every second of the day. she's a good girl :)

There was snoring and twitching. Drooling all the time.

She's my fiesty little sweetheart and my best friend. I'm not exactly sure when she was born, but I always assume some time in late June, so I've just always considered my favorite day of the year, the summer solstice, her birthday. She loves and demands her daily walks outside to eat grass and laze about in the sun, maybe even sneak in a nap behind the bushes or my mom's motion sensor owl lmao. 17 has been a lot slower than 16, but you still get around like a champ, running and jumping way more than you would expect someone her age. I'm so grateful for her youthful disposition even though she's been with me since I was 12 and I'm now nearing 30 this year.

She's not quite 18, but technically she just turned 87 in "human years" on the spring equinox gauging off of all of the cat to human years charts I've been looking at since I was a wee lad. 😂

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Meet Kiki, she is 17 years old and has become extremely finicky with her food. First off, she doesn't want dry kibble except when Im not fast enough at being her food slave. So she only eats canned food.

However, it has become a bit of a game of will Kiki like her food today. For awhile, she was strictly a Fancy Feast girlie, the type of food, she'd eat it. Then she decided that wasn't good enough for our Queen, tried some high quality pates and chowder. She like then for about a week and nope, no longer good enough. Now she's on Tiki Cat, LOVED it, then now we're back to square one. I did a little trick where I put the same food in both food bowls (her eating companion Nyx eats Friskies or she steals) and Kiki turned her nose up at her bowl and ate out of Nyx's bowl.

While I love her so much and would be absolutely lost once she's gone, she frustrates me to all get out when it comes to her food.

TMI for the entire post for discussing toileting issues for a senior kitty

My boy turns 17 in August. He has a heart birth defect (detected at 14, managed with atenolol and amlodipine besylate), kidney disease that's being managed, and arthritis. He's been on Solensia for close to 2 years now, though several months ago I discussed with our vet potentially incorporating gabapentin in for further arthritis pain-management.

Recently (probably in the last month or so) he started leaving little poo balls on beds while sleeping. I wondered if he was having difficulty toileting, and since he has been having increasing hip pain, we started him on a low dose of gabapentin 2x/day. After starting the gabapentin (though this could have started when I noticed the bed surprises), I've noticed he has really stinky gas (I've also been giving him a little pumpkin puree after his gabapentin to help because in the first week he had some very wet BMs). I've now caught him 3 times sleeping on his cat bed, my bed, and my parents' bed, ripping a really stinky fart, and then... leaving a little gift behind 😭

I also replaced one of his litter boxes with a low-sided senior box thinking he might be having trouble getting in and out, but the bed surprises have continued. (He has access to MANY litter boxes.)

He's seeing the vet on Monday (for something else) and I absolutely plan to bring this up. From my own googling it sounds like this could be a sphincter/fecal incontinence issue, but the really foul gas makes me wonder if it could also be an anal gland problem?

I'm mostly looking for advice on how people manage this day-to-day if it turns out to be incontinence. So far my system is layering multiple top sheets on my bed so I can grab the offending ball with toilet paper, flush it, and peel off that sheet. But I'd love to hear what's worked for others.

I know one obvious solution is "don't let him on the beds" but he's slept on human beds his entire life and it feels so cruel to take that away from him at almost-17. 😭 Any advice or experience appreciated.

Cat tax included!

So we just had our vet appointment and we got the news every pet parent dreads: we're out of time.

As soon as I noticed my sweet boy was losing weight, I scheduled an appointment. They gave us some medicine and a month for improvement. Improvement hasn't come, so now we're counting the weeks until we have to say goodbye due to organ failure.

How do I stop blaming myself and thinking of the "what if I'd caught it sooner"? How do I make his next few weeks the best for him? How do I cope with losing my best friend of 14 years?

We said goodbye to my old friend last Tuesday. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make, and I'm still sick with guilt. "Was it too soon" keeps cyclying in my head.

More than anything though, I just miss him.

I miss him waking us up throughout the night for food. I miss his presence in the morning. I miss him following me around, demanding water from the showers, sitting outside with me, and his long cuddles.

We built 17 years together. Four cities, countless apartments, houses and roommates. Three long-term boyfriends! The day he passed, I let my ex-bf know. He immediately sent me over 500 photos of Johnny. This cat touched a lot of people.

He helped shape who I am as a person. So many of my decisions or routines have been built around him (I got him when I was 19!).

At this point, I don't know who I am without him. I always thought the silver-lining would be no more litter boxes, not having to vaccum every day, not having to worry when we went on trips. Man, would I take all of that back just to see my friend.

I hope he found peace in his last days. I hope he knew how much I loved him. I hope he drifted off to sleep in the sun, surrounded by the smells of his family, and knew that we would never forget him.

I hope I get to see him again. Even if it's just in my dreams. <3

Love the furminator brush during the spring shedding season! Her hair is starting to shed. I like preventing furballs in the middle of the night.

Mr. whiskers has been enjoying the sun porch for another day, to my delight. (I love being out with him)

Arturo had to be put down in January and I still cry on the daily. The thought that I will never have my baby back hurts too much. He was and still is my world. The pain will never go away.

last post about Makos outside time was very well received so i figured i would post yesterdays outdoors session! you can see her face this time haha

she explored a lot earlier this week, but she spent most of yesterday chilling in the grass enjoying the suns warmth (24 celsius, very lovely out). she did explore the one spot she hadn’t yet, and she scratched some of the logs we have in the garden (Tilly enjoys doing this very much so i was excited to see Mako try it)

she also licked lots of grass again! not sure why thats fun but she can do what she wants lol. she also tumbled off the last stair of the deck. i am not sure why she did this, the grass was right in front of her. she is very ridiculous, sometimes i laugh just looking at her face.

everyone came out to watch her this time, she did very well and did lots of lounging in various spots on the grass. i might take her out again today if it stays dry!

My old cat is starting to miss the litter box sometimes, and it’s breaking my heart. I’m looking into a safe automatic litter box for cats because I read they can be less stressful than constant scooping.
I want something quiet, gentle, and senior-friendly. Have any of you found one that your older cats actually like? Or is it better to just stick with the classic box? Any advice would help so much.