Well, we wish we could give you a simple answer, but unfortunately there isn’t one. Despite it’s true that we can – give or take – translate a cat’s age into human years, this correlation relies on one essential element: whether it’s a stray or a domestic cat.
Even if we are not fully aware of it, stray cats have to face a huge number of dangers that drastically shorten their life expectancy:
- Attacks from other animals such as dogs, wild animals or even other cats. Despite it is true that cats know how to defend themselves quite well, they can also get seriously injured as a result of one of these fights.
- Road accidents: when cats are looking for food sometimes the cross roads and paths and are run over.
- Exposure to diseases: feral cats have to deal with infectious diseases, such as feline leukemia (FeLV), feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) or other feline illnesses such as feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). To top it off we have fleas, mites and other parasites that make their lives harder and pass on diseases to them.
- Poisoning: in the lookout for food cats can encounter toxic substances directly (chemicals, poisonous plants) and indirectly (eating animals that had been poisoned or eating food that people had poisoned).
- Extreme weather conditions: If surviving on the street is not difficult enough, they also have to deal with extreme cold, rain, heat and other weather phenomena that push them to take even more risks. The cold often forces them to seek shelter in unsuitable places (such as the engine of a car) which puts them even more at risk.
Life for stray cats is hard, but that doesn’t mean they cannot live a long life. By rescuing, adopting or fostering you can change this situation and increase their life expectancy.
Now that we know all this, how can I find out how old my cat is? Here is a graph where you can calculate it:
In Stars in the Trash, our main character – Moka – runs away from home and faces different dangers on the streets. Do you want to live his story first hand? Add Stars in the Trash to your wishlist and we’ll give you a heads up when the game is out. This simple act will boost our project’s visibility and will help us to keep supporting animal shelters in the future.
The latest from Valhalla Cats and things I found interesting this week:
- “Cat people always seem to know other cat people. I think we seek each other out, and though we never really say it to each other, we consider ourselves superior to people who don’t have or appreciate cats. I think what makes us feel superior is not that we have a cat in our homes, but that a cat has found us acceptable to live with. There is a thrill in that that a dog owner will never know“. Excerpt from the book “All my Patients are under the bed”. I am enjoying every page.
- Cat podcast alert: 6 Degrees of Cats. Across each nine-episode season, host and lifelong cat custodian Amanda B. explores intriguing connections between cats and various aspects of human culture.
Thank you for your time. I hope you enjoyed the read.
Have a wonderful day,
Jose
