Mary Allen
One thing is certain: you cannot prevent your cat from aging, no matter how much you want to. But one thing is also certain: you can support your cat in aging in good health.
You can preserve her quality of life and her vitality for as long as possible – through regular health checks, a lot of consideration and love, and the right nutrition. Certain functions and processes in the body change with age and you should react accordingly.
Age Is An Individual Thing
When is a cat old? As with us humans, there are big individual differences. Not only the biological age plays a role. How is your cat behaving, does it have any symptoms or is it completely healthy? Please note that special diets for animals suffering from a disease (e.g. renal insufficiency) are more likely to harm healthy seniors. Feeding them a diet or special foods to prevent signs of aging makes no sense. But there is also ready-made food for healthy oldies that you can offer your senior cat. If your cat moves very little and likes to eat, it is bound to gain weight.
Watch The Cat’s Weight
Being overweight puts a strain on the organism, so in this case, you should offer a reduced-calorie feed with valuable nutrients. Obesity promotes diabetes mellitus, damages the joints, and can cause liver problems. Rapid weight loss is just as damaging to your cat, and this is much more common with age: the sense of smell and taste decreases, leading to a loss of appetite. Here are a few very simple tricks. Warmed feed smells more intensively and stimulates the appetite. And if you mix strong-smelling ingredients into the feed, e.g. fish or liver, it can also be smelled by the less sensitive senior citizen’s nose. In general, it is better to offer several small meals a day. The reduced portions are easier to digest and manageable even for picky eaters. And in the opposite case, namely, if the kitty likes to eat too much, you can control the weight gain better. Digestion often becomes sluggish with age. This is nothing to worry about, but you must be careful to provide the cat with easily digestible food. Lean meat in small pieces, preferably chicken, turkey, or fish – it contains important proteins that have to be of particularly high quality with increasing age. Protein deficiency accelerates the aging process, but burning it produces urea as a waste product. For an older animal, this is an additional burden, especially since the detoxification organs, kidneys, and liver, no longer function properly in many senior cats.
The Special Diet Only For Sick Animals
If a vet has diagnosed your cat with renal failure – and only then – you need to adjust your cat’s diet to accommodate the condition. The levels of phosphorus, sodium, and protein in the diet must be reduced. At the same time, high-quality fats in the feed must ensure that the sick cat is supplied with sufficient energy. Be sure to ask your vet for advice. Older cats are generally less able to digest their food. This is related to the declining function of certain organs (e.g. liver) and the reduced intestinal movement. This poorer utilization can be compensated for by offering high-quality food. The need for vitamins increases, vitamins A, B1, B6, B12, and E are particularly important for digestion and metabolism. Incidentally, a lack of vitamin B can also lead to loss of appetite. Try if your cat likes a food fortified with a little brewer’s yeast – it’s high in B vitamins.
Digestion Can Be Supported
As the immune system weakens with age, the senior cat is more susceptible to infectious diseases. The amino acid lysine, which is mainly found in fish but also in eggs, has a strengthening effect on the immune system. In order to stimulate digestion, it is advisable to enrich the feed with roughage, such as raw potato starch. Due to their volume, the roughage stimulates intestinal activity. The most important thing is not to burden an older animal with food that is difficult to digest and to ensure high quality more than ever before. Because the little tigers still need energy and proteins – it’s just more difficult for the organism to digest and utilize them.