Pet Care Articles
Watching Our Pets Age Brings Joy, Heartache
March 4th, 2017
By Jacquielynn Floyd
Unless your household includes a Galapagos tortoise or a Bowhead whale, you will probably outlive your pet. Like all of us, they grow up; they grow old; they die, but on an abbreviated timetable.
Still, a healthy dog or cat lasts a good long time. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, both species qualify as “seniors” by about age 7, but they can live much longer.
Medical advancements and better diets are contributing to longer lives for our pets, same as for ourselves. True, they are “just” animals, but when someone has met you at the door, slept in your bed and (unless prevented) drunk from your toilet for a decade, the bond between you is set like Super Glue. You get used to each other.
It didn’t quite resonate with me that our pets had crossed the line from “senior” to “geriatric” until we lost one. Lamar, one of three brothers we adopted as kittens the year we were married, died in early February. He was 16.
A 16-year-old cat is the rough equivalent of an 80-year-old person, so it should not have come as a shock. It did, though: Lamar was a great cat, goofy and sweet, happy every day of his long life.
His kidneys shut down so suddenly and dramatically that there was little time to dread the inevitable. Our kind vet (Dr. Gus Kirby, best vet in D-FW, there is no competition) gently and painlessly euthanized Lamar while I wept and hiccuped and said goodbye.
It is a favor I would want for myself.
We still have Lamar’s two brothers, and I realize now that they are very, very old dudes. How did this happen? The squalling orange kittens we brought home on impulse in a borrowed pet carrier from the Dallas animal shelter in 1999 are geriatric cases now, and I know I can’t expect them to last much longer.
But having these old guys around, and even witnessing their accelerating decline, has its unexpected rewards. There’s an odd satisfaction in knowing that they have had, and still have, pretty good lives.
Naturally, people love their human children, and do all they can for them. Ultimately, though, kids grow up. You still love them, even when they reach the age at which, on being told to stop texting at the dinner table, they roll their eyes and answer “whatever” in a manner that offers sudden insight into the tendency of some species to eat their own young.
Pets aren’t always easy, either. They overturn the trash, they snap at houseguests, they eat random objects and throw them up on the rug.
But your relationship does not change — they never stop expecting to be with you every day. A dog won’t get a job at Google and move to San Francisco; your cat won’t go off to college and never call unless it’s to ask for money.
So I’m grateful now that we still have our two old guys. Carl is creaky with arthritis — the cat who could once leap from the dining room table to the top of the china cabinet now needs a little flight of stairs to get on the bed. He still follows Mike, doglike, all over the house, but it takes him longer to get there now.
His brother, Lee Roy, formerly a shy little weenie of a cat, has ripened into a crazy old man. He gets lost in odd places — closets, bathtubs — and has bouts of resonant, baritone howling in the middle of the night. Sometimes he grunts and sputters, as if he’s fulminating over black helicopters or the Trilateral Commission.
In fact, they age a great deal as we do. They develop familiar maladies like cancer, diabetes and dementia. Their bodies wear out, just like ours.
It makes me wistful to see them grow old, but it’s not a tragedy. It has been a privilege to have them love us so unashamedly and so consistently. As sad as I still am some days over Lamar’s passing, there’s comfort in knowing that we gave him a long, safe and happy life.
Our pets remind us that age is a part of life. Sometimes it’s awfully tough, but love eases its burdens.
End.
Unless your household includes a Galapagos tortoise or a Bowhead whale, you will probably outlive your pet. Like all of us, they grow up; they grow old; they die, but on an abbreviated timetable.
Still, a healthy dog or cat lasts a good long time. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, both species qualify as “seniors” by about age 7, but they can live much longer.
Medical advancements and better diets are contributing to longer lives for our pets, same as for ourselves. True, they are “just” animals, but when someone has met you at the door, slept in your bed and (unless prevented) drunk from your toilet for a decade, the bond between you is set like Super Glue. You get used to each other.
It didn’t quite resonate with me that our pets had crossed the line from “senior” to “geriatric” until we lost one. Lamar, one of three brothers we adopted as kittens the year we were married, died in early February. He was 16.
A 16-year-old cat is the rough equivalent of an 80-year-old person, so it should not have come as a shock. It did, though: Lamar was a great cat, goofy and sweet, happy every day of his long life.
His kidneys shut down so suddenly and dramatically that there was little time to dread the inevitable. Our kind vet (Dr. Gus Kirby, best vet in D-FW, there is no competition) gently and painlessly euthanized Lamar while I wept and hiccuped and said goodbye.
It is a favor I would want for myself.
We still have Lamar’s two brothers, and I realize now that they are very, very old dudes. How did this happen? The squalling orange kittens we brought home on impulse in a borrowed pet carrier from the Dallas animal shelter in 1999 are geriatric cases now, and I know I can’t expect them to last much longer.
But having these old guys around, and even witnessing their accelerating decline, has its unexpected rewards. There’s an odd satisfaction in knowing that they have had, and still have, pretty good lives.
Naturally, people love their human children, and do all they can for them. Ultimately, though, kids grow up. You still love them, even when they reach the age at which, on being told to stop texting at the dinner table, they roll their eyes and answer “whatever” in a manner that offers sudden insight into the tendency of some species to eat their own young.
Pets aren’t always easy, either. They overturn the trash, they snap at houseguests, they eat random objects and throw them up on the rug.
But your relationship does not change — they never stop expecting to be with you every day. A dog won’t get a job at Google and move to San Francisco; your cat won’t go off to college and never call unless it’s to ask for money.
So I’m grateful now that we still have our two old guys. Carl is creaky with arthritis — the cat who could once leap from the dining room table to the top of the china cabinet now needs a little flight of stairs to get on the bed. He still follows Mike, doglike, all over the house, but it takes him longer to get there now.
His brother, Lee Roy, formerly a shy little weenie of a cat, has ripened into a crazy old man. He gets lost in odd places — closets, bathtubs — and has bouts of resonant, baritone howling in the middle of the night. Sometimes he grunts and sputters, as if he’s fulminating over black helicopters or the Trilateral Commission.
In fact, they age a great deal as we do. They develop familiar maladies like cancer, diabetes and dementia. Their bodies wear out, just like ours.
It makes me wistful to see them grow old, but it’s not a tragedy. It has been a privilege to have them love us so unashamedly and so consistently. As sad as I still am some days over Lamar’s passing, there’s comfort in knowing that we gave him a long, safe and happy life.
Our pets remind us that age is a part of life. Sometimes it’s awfully tough, but love eases its burdens.
End.