Somewhere around ten or eleven, your cat quietly crosses into “senior” territory. No memo about it, no dramatic before and after. Just a slower jump onto the counter one week, a little more sleep the next, and one day you realize the kitten who used to launch herself off the bookshelf now takes the stairs one at a time.
We watch this shift happen in a lot of the cats we care for, and here’s the thing we wish more owners heard sooner: aging is not the same as declining. Some of what you’re noticing is completely normal. Some of it deserves a phone call to the vet. And honestly, a lot of what actually matters here (the attention, the routine, the person who shows up and knows her) shouldn’t change at all.
What Genuinely Changes With Age
Mobility. Arthritis is wildly common in cats over ten, and cats are experts at hiding pain. You might not see limping. You’ll see a cat who stopped jumping to the windowsill, or who hesitates before a leap she used to make without thinking. Lower the perches. Add a step near her favorite spots. Small changes, real difference.
Appetite and weight. Both directions matter here. Weight loss in an older cat is one of the most common early signs of kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, or dental pain, and it’s easy to miss if you’re not weighing her regularly. Weight gain matters too, especially if she’s moving less. Either shift is worth mentioning to your vet, not just noting and moving on.
Litter box habits. Accidents outside the box in a senior cat are almost never spite, and they’re rarely a “behavior problem” either, whatever the internet tells you. Usually it’s pain, or a box that’s suddenly too tall to climb into comfortably, or a medical issue that needs attention. This is the one that gets waved off as “she’s just getting old” most often, and it’s usually the cat telling you something real.
Coat and grooming. Older cats groom less, partly because reaching certain spots gets uncomfortable. A dull, matted, or greasy-looking coat is common, and gentle brushing becomes more of your job than hers.
Senses. Vision and hearing both decline gradually. A cat who startles more easily or seems confused in a rearranged room may simply not be seeing or hearing it the way she used to.
Vet visit frequency. This is the one change we’d actually ask you to make on purpose. Cats over ten do best with vet checkups twice a year instead of once, because so much of what shows up in a senior cat is easier to catch early than to fix late.
What Shouldn’t Change
Here’s where we’ll get a little opinionated: an older cat is not a lesser cat. She doesn’t need less of anything, except maybe stairs.
She still wants to stalk a wand toy or ambush something that moves, even if the ambush is slower and involves more napping in between. She still needs consistency, in her environment and in who’s caring for her. This is actually the worst possible moment to swap in a new sitter every time you travel. Senior cats notice change more, not less, and an unfamiliar person in the house on top of everything else her body is doing is not nothing to her.
And she deserves someone who actually notices things, not just someone who tops off the food bowl and scoops the box. The good sitters are the ones who catch that she left half her breakfast, or seemed stiff getting up off the couch, or just seemed off, before any of it turns into an emergency. That kind of unhurried attention is the whole point of how we do cat care visits, and if anything it matters more as a cat gets older, not less.
Getting older isn’t a problem to manage. It’s just the next stage, and it deserves the same care every other stage got. If your beloved old cat could use a sitter who treats her senior years with as much attention as her kitten ones, we’d love to meet her.
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