How our cat is doing

Boopsie, our kitty, is old. She's sixteen, maybe seventeen. That's a pretty respectable age for a cat, and it's starting to show.

She's having somewhat dodgy kidney function, and her thyroid isn't great. These are fairly typical for a cat her age -- and they're among the things which kill old cats. I mean, if a cat dies of old age, kidney, thyroid, and cancer are all pretty good guesses of what caused the "dying of old age".

That said, she's in pretty good shape in most ways. She is alert and interested in the world -- this may be a side effect of the hyperthyroidism; she's definitely entering her second kittenhood. For the past seven years, Boopsie was either uninterested in or scared of the downstairs (we're a second-floor apartment that shares a first-floor foyer with the downstairs apartment -- it's not hard to describe how it's set up, but it would take time. We're an old Victorian which has been split into apartments). And now she's downstairs every time the door opens. So it's definitely a behavior change, although not really a personality change. She's still the same Boopsie, but she's more energetic and adventurous than she has been in years.

She's also pissing inappropriately pretty much all the time. I don't really know what to do about that -- we just make sure that anything we don't want pissed on is off the floor, and we put a tarp over the bed.

But the worrisome thing is how much weight she's lost. And why.

She's not been eating. And for anyone who knows her, this is truly disturbing. She's normally a glutton; she once weighed sixteen pounds. Now she weighs seven.

Ten pounds would be a healthy weight for her.

So I've been trying to get and keep her weight up. Part of it is trying to figure out WHY she's not eating. And the main thing I've been doing is trying to figure out how to get food into her.

She's pretty much entirely on people food now, because she's more likely to eat it. And I finally found something that she'll eat pretty much reliably.

My chicken soup. Yeah, she's definitely related to Lis.

I defrosted some of the chicken soup from the last batch I made, to try this out. I'd been suspecting dental problems, and wondering if she just didn't want to chew. And she has been drinking a lot of water, so I knew that she COULD drink.

So why not chicken soup? It's a clear broth version, and it's got protein and calories and stuff, and it's liquid. I know that alliums aren't great for cats, but my recipe pretty light on onion, like, one onion boiled in five gallons of soup (twenty liters).

And she'll eat it. So, between that and Oscar Myer "Oven Roasted" Low-Sodium Sliced Deli-Cuts Turkey Breast, I'm getting and keeping her weight up. But it's a challenge.

Boopsie is coming to the end of her life. I'm hoping that she'll be around for another three years, but I don't really think she will. I love that cat, and will do what I can to keep her healthy, and comfortable, and happy as long as I can.

And seventeen years -- seventeen happy years -- is a good life for a cat.

'Course, twenty would be better.