Thursday, August 6, 2009

PIEPER, the Senior Cat - Pffffttttt!




“Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.” Sinclair Lewis

Hi friends, Pieper here. Mom is in the laundry room, so I thought I’d sit my fuzzy bottom right here at the computer and tell you what happened to me!

The vet called me a SENIOR CAT!!! And worse yet, Mom agreed with her!!! I’ve rarely been this insulted, let me tell you!

I’m a proud 13 and one-half years old, almost to the day (supposedly 68 in human years). Sure, I sleep a lot, but my baby cat manual said that was what we cats do 90 percent of the time anyway! Why should I change now??? Pfffttt…

The vet actually gave her a book about “Celebrating Seniors!” This happy flap book told Mom that the most common senior diseases in animals (dogs AND cats) were:

Dental problems
Liver disease
Kidney disease
Heart and lung disease
Joint problems
Endocrine system problems (like diabetes)
Cancer
Ocular (eyes to you, and what the heck, we use them twice as much as humans – better at night even! Pfffttt!
Gastrointestinal

Great, so NOW I have to go back in and have a total workup: baseline blood work (I don’t think I like the thought of THAT much, unless the vet is going to squeeze it out of my toenail or something), identify existing health problems by doing x-rays, hormone testing, and EEG of my heart (and I have no problems with any of these now, but just these tests are enough to assure that I DO have one), and then monitoring me so that means even MORE visits to the vet! Oh, joy, oh, joy!

Okay, that’s it for today. I’m so depressed, I think I’ll go eat a sardine or something, have a clump of catnip and then sleep it off. Mom’s on her way back to the office and we sure don’t want her to know that I type or else she’ll want to test for carpal tunnel syndrome!

1 comment:

Dede said...

Oh Pieper, it's OK! Really it is. Being older is being wiser. Don't let them tell you any different. You are a beautiful cat!