Cats can live into their late teens and beyond, with the later years requiring proactive management of common geriatric conditions to maintain quality of life.
Geriatric cat care has transformed with improvements in veterinary medicine, enabling many age-related conditions to be managed rather than simply accepted. Annual or biannual blood panels for cats over 10 detect kidney disease, thyroid dysfunction, and diabetes before clinical signs appear. Arthritis — severely underdiagnosed in cats — causes significant pain and reduced quality of life that responds well to multimodal pain management. Blood pressure monitoring detects hypertension causing retinal haemorrhage and sudden blindness. Proactive geriatric care extends both lifespan and welfare in the later years.