This is unusual. And people ask if they should adopt an old cat. They mean a cat who is 10-years-of-age not 26! But this woman did it and this cat looks great.

His name is Thomas. He looks very elderly. Very few domestic cats reach 26-years-of-age. It is very rare indeed. He has that bony appearance as he has lost muscle mass.

I don’t think he has long to live and it is nice that his life is pretty good. The only downside it seems to me is that the good lady who adopted Thomas, Laura Cassidy, already had six cats which it seems has stressed Thomas a bit. Thomas has come into a pretty busy home and he was at the shelter for a month under the care of Baltimore County Animal Services. Laura admits he is stressed. I don’t want to be critical, far from it, but I don’t think his current home is ideal for a very elderly guy like this but it must be a lot better than a rescue shelter.

I wonder if Thomas is the oldest cat ever to be adopted from a rescue facility? It wouldn’t surprise me if he was. He has gained some fame and rightly so.

Thomas is very hungry and eats a lot. This may be due to hyperthyroidism. This is thyroid cancer. It tends to occur in older cats. The vet found a mass which could be a tumour but I don’t know if it is that area.

Thomas’s teeth are bad but they can’t operate because he is too old (the anesthetic would probably kill him). He is on a course of antibiotics to manage the gum disease.

So if you ask “should I adopt an old cat?” the answer I hope would be yes. There are both upsides and downsides. The joy of giving an old cat a nice home for the last years or moments of his life brings enormous pleasure. There will be more care in terms of health issues and you’ll have to deal with the difficult question of euthanasia if it arrives and it often does.

Source: Baltimore Sun