STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Maven · BCBG

Anyone have cats older than 17 years.

laken1 · Hermes

my in laws had a cat live until 21. She was pretty healthy all the way through & they had her put down because she got really sick & they figured they'd rather put her down than make her suffer through it.

Metric · Gucci

My childhood cat lived to be 19 before he died of Feline Immune Deficiency (cat version of Aids). He was a big old tomcat that used to rule the neighborhood. He was always healthy right up until about 3 weeks before he died, he just deteriorated so rapidly. It was really sad

My SIL's cat is almost 20 and still going strong.

relrel · Marc Jacobs

we had this cat boots who was pushing 20 when he finally died. it's actually the saddest story ever. boots was my cat who i got when i was in second or third grade and he always just seemed to be around. right around the time he was 12 or 13 or so we got a female cat from somewhere (we always had lots of cats, either as kittens we ended up keeping or that my sisters had rescued from somewhere) and they fell in love. there were no babies from boots and his young woman (she had to have been at least seven or eight years younger than him) beause boots was fixed but they went everywhere together and were together for six or so years. she (i actually can't remember her name) got hit on the road in front of our house one day and died. within a week boots got hit on the road as well. i have decided that boots committed suicide over the death of his lady love because he was an old old cat who had learned to look both ways when crossing the road. the road in front of our house is pretty busy but across the street is a little stream and lots of woods and trees so the cats are always over there. boots not only looked both ways but never ever crossed the road when cars were around. he would stand at the side of the road and wait for everything to be all clear. he didn't have any problems seeing so that wasn't an issue. the poor thing just couldn't stand to live without his feline wife and so chose his only option, suicde by car.

that was the only cat to make it past 15 or so, everybody else just wondered off or got hit on the road. damn road. but boots was completely healthy his whole entire life.

gingembre1 · Kate Spade

I have one cat right now who's around 18 yrs, but she was feral until she was 8 or so. So she's only had 10 years of good, healthy, expensive food, and she has some back issues from her feral days. But she can still hear, see, and move around, and she just occasionally needs some antibiotics for a recurring upper respiratory infection. When I was 5, though, I found some boys trying to drown a cat. I ended up rescuing him (well, my mom did), and he lived to be 18 and a half. I had to put him down because he was in full kidney failure, and I couldn't make him linger and suffer any longer. That was the hardest, because I basically grew up with that cat. As for my other cats, we have a ~10 yr old enormous ex-tom cat, and a little young guy who's on his way to becoming enormous.

I think the most important part of having such long-lived cats was feeding them the expensive dry food. Also, preventive health care, and living in a safe neighborhood.

blink · Coach

growing up, we had a brown siamese cat that lived until about 20 and he had no illnesses, but was very slow, thin, and fragile in his last months. He was an indoor/outdoor cat and one day he just never came home, but we really don't think anything tragic happened to him, we lived near some open land and I believe that old cats sometimes just go somewhere calm to lay down and die.

Yours are probably indoor cats, so that won't happen thank goodness, but if they are healthy up until death, I have heard they just die in their sleep.