This old girl has arthritis…

If you follow us on social media, you will remember that a few weeks ago, we had to do a rather urgent run to the vet for Layla. She really is the feline face of this blog, and she is my baby, too, as well as the children, in fact she has been around longer than the children. 

She will be 12 in July. I think, technically that makes her 80 in cat years. She’s basically an old lady, or getting there. 

It turns out she had damaged her hip, probably chasing Jasper, or climbing her favorite tree in the garden, then jumping down again. A course of anti inflammatory medication and some pain relief and making her stay indoors so she didn’t over exert herself did the trick. 

But, when the vet examined her, he did say she has the beginnings of arthritis in her back legs and hips and that we would need to look at how we approach caring for her with that in mind. She will start to get stiffer and slower, I have already noticed she is a bit less mobile than she used to be and she grumbles when she has to jump, and as we know, arthritis is painful. Both the vet and I agree that despite her rocky start to life and her health issues, that she’s doing really well, and to use an old quote, “there’s plenty of life in the old girl yet”. So we want to make sure she has a good quality of life, and is as pain free as possible. 

It’s hard thinking that a much loved pet, with so much personality, is getting older, and that she may start to feel pain and not be able manage as well as she is used to. She’s off to the vet next week for a full MOT and some tests to see what’s what (which she will hate, and she will sulk for days after, of course) and then we will go from there as to what medications and treatments she needs to help her live her life to the cranky, grumpy full that makes her so special to us… 

ANIMALTALES

Posted in Family Life and Parenting, Pet's Corner and tagged animal tales, Cat care, cat owner, cat owner problems..., looking after your elderly cat.

3 Comments

  1. i hope she isn’t in too much discomfort, bless her, she really is a lovely cat, our cat is around 8-9 now and still thinks she’s a kitten #animaltales

  2. Pets getting old and ill is such a difficult thing to deal with. I look at our old cat, Henry, and wonder how long his kidneys can hang out and I have been comforting a friend this week who lost her beloved dog. Hopefully Layla will have many more years and the vets can sort out her some good medication. Saari is 10 today and I can’t quite believe we have had her so that long.

    Thanks for linking up to #AnimalTales and I hope you can be there next time for our 100th Birthday. You can link up a new post as well as an old favourite, even if you have already linked it … maybe one you simply just really like or one that you’d like to give a bit of extra love to!

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