When to start senior cat food
How to Care for Elderly Cats
I'm dr. J's King and this is Austin
Zimmerman and we're here with the
Washington family veterinary clinic and
today we're going to talk a little bit
about how to care for an elderly cat to
start start off the probably the most
important thing is to is with nutrition
as cats get older they do change their
how much they need how much they'll eat
and so there's different diets that are
that are specifically made for elderly
cat for senior cats that you can do
sometimes cat elderly cats will need
canned food sometimes cats will just
need the dry food but so there's
different diets that that's where I
generally start is nutrition wise on
where do we start on what do we need to
feed our cat and what's best for our cat
the second thing probably that one of
the most important parts is is senior
vet regularly as animals get older they
should be seen about every six months
sometimes almost every six months to a
year
they should have routine blood work done
they should have deworming done they
should keep up to date on their vaccines
and those are there's there's little
health checks just a routine health
screen that veterinarians can pick up on
simple diseases that maybe the layperson
cannot pick up on but one other thing
you should look for as an owner and
elderly cats are to check their their
teeth we really have a really big
problem with dental disease and small
animals and lifting up the gums and
actually looking at your cat's teeth
looking at the gum color do you see
plaque do you see any irritation on the
gums indicating gingivitis so something
good to check in your cat's mouth to see
if you have dental disease in case we
may have abscessed teeth or teeth that
need to be pulled or anything like that
so one of the other good things to look
for in an elderly cat so a few things
you may want to as cats become older as
they become past the age of seven
bloodwork yearly is a good is a good
idea to check their organ function
and making sure that they're up to date
on their vaccines in their deworming
most most importantly keeping your cat's
physical health by nutrition and keeping
making sure that you're seeing the vet
regularly are probably the most
important things to taking care of a cat
the other thing elderly cats that you
should watch for are just different
behavior changes as in drinking more
water or maybe losing a rapid amount of
weight or different things like that
that you may want to look for to see
that your cat may actually be having
something go on there may be some
internal problem that may be arising
that maybe you're not picking up on so
those are a few things that we look have
you look for in case there was a problem
with an elderly cat
