When I got Newton and Jefferson in October 1994, my vet’s best guess was that they were about 6 months old, so they have an unofficial birthday of April 1, 1994. Seeing Jackson and Sadie grow up (they’re about 8 months old now), I’m pretty sure my guys were actually younger than that, but I’ll never know for sure. In any event, Newton is now approximately 19 years old, which is something like 94 in human years. He’s an elderly kitty.
Since his hospital stay last year, he’s been doing pretty well, but he’s been getting harder to care for.
First of all, he gets quite a bit of medication:
- Subcutaneous fluids daily
- A half-pill of tapazole twice a day for hyperthyroidism
- A tumil-K tablet daily (a potassium supplement)
- A quarter-tablet of Pepcid daily
- Two ml of aluminum hydroxide gel twice a day (to reduce his phosphorus levels)
- A shot of Epogen once a week, to improve his red blood cell count
This is less expensive than it might seem – only the Epogen is really expensive – but it’s a lot of stuff we have to do every day. This (combined with Blackjack’s condition prior to his death last year) is the main reason we haven’t taken a vacation trip since our two weeks in Hawaii in 2011. It’s been a drag in that regard.
On top of that, Newton has basically stopped using his litter to pee in, so we’ve had to surround the downstairs litter with puppy pads for him to go on, and change them once or twice a day. Some days he doesn’t even make it to the litter and just goes on the floor. It’s pretty annoying. I’d be more okay with giving him all his meds if he just used his litter properly again.
The one bright spot is that he’s still doing pretty well. We upped some of his meds to the levels above when he went to the vet in February. But the vet said that he seems basically healthy, and still happy (since he was rubbing his chin on things in the vet’s office). He has his days when he does little besides sleep, but other days he walks around a bit, sits in the sun, and meows at nothing. And he loves for me to take him outside into the back yard; since he can’t jump well anymore, I let him walk around in the grass on occasion since I know he’s not going to run away (over our 7-foot-tall fence).
Newton’s not really the same kitty he used to be, and he keeps to himself a lot. While I’m glad he’s still around, part of me kind of wishes that his decline wouldn’t drag out quite so long. And that he wouldn’t pee on the floor.
Anyway, we’re going to have to take a vacation sooner or later, and the care he needs means we can’t really ask our friends to come watch him, so we’ll probably have to find and pay for a professional sitter.