Apple Was Born in Our House
Apple was born in our house. You might wonder how that happened. Well, we owned a house with some extra space so we rented the upstairs out to a nice couple who were friends of ours. They had a female cat who happened to be pregnant. When she gave birth, it was in our house. If memory serves me correctly, it was a litter of six. After they had grown a bit, one of the cats meandered away from the litter and approached my wife. It was Apple who seemed attracted to us, so we adopted her. The rest is history.
Apple when she was a young kitten, posing in front of other pictures of herself.
Apple has been a good cat. A small female that didn't fight with the other cats. She did a good job helping keep the homestead free of mice in her younger years. The only issue that developed is a personality conflict with one of the other cats in the house. He was the dominant cat. Through the years, as long as the other cats "bowed down" to him, everything was okay. Apple did not bow down to him. So there was friction. Because of this, Apple once ran away for 13 days, living out in the woods. Perhaps the only thing that brought her back was hunger - but she did come back. Owners of two or more cats will often see personality conflicts and unfortunately, there isn't a lot that can be done if you have them living under one roof. Does anyone have any suggestions? Leave a comment below.
Apple standing guard while Pablo takes a nap during a nice late February day.
Apple has always been a healthy cat and the only regret we have is that we had her declawed. She is the first and only cat we ever declawed. A couple of other cats that we adopted already had the procedure done before they came to us. I am glad that the practice is not as common as it once was. At the time when Apple was young, it was just "a thing" that people would have done to indoor cats. People told us we should do it because otherwise, we might not be able to rent an apartment and have a cat. They told us the cats would claw the furniture. Many years later, I now think, so what! We have our own house and our own furniture. It is there for the cats as much as it is for us. The couch gets clawed but it is not completely ruined. After a few years, we will just get a new couch. We usually buy used, so it is not expensive. What do you think about the procedure? I doubt we will ever get another one of our cats declawed. It seems to ruin a specific natural aspect of their lives.
Apple liked relaxing on the deck, as long as the male cats didn’t pick on her too much.
Apple is now our oldest cat, going on 15 years of age and doing well. If you saw her, you might not notice that she is of advanced age, but I suspect that is coming. She is always hungry and the vet thinks she has hyperthyroidism - essentially thyroid cancer. It is not the worst disease in the world, but over the course of a couple of years, it tends to have indirect effects on other organs of the body. At the time of this writing, her liver enzymes are already a little on the high side. For this, we are giving her a supplement that is a combination of SAMe and silymarin (milk thistle extract). It seems to work well. She has also received Rejuvecat's first potential rejuvenation treatment - a senolytic compound. Even though this compound has not been previously tested in cats, she seems to tolerate it well and has not suffered any noticeable negative side effects. It is something Rejuvecat hopes to conduct further testing on, but that is the subject of a future blog post.
Apple is older but still looks quite healthy
For now, Apple is doing well, and we would like to extend her life if possible. At her age, I am unsure if we will be able to stave off the grim reaper for too long, but with advancing biomedical research each year, there is some hope. What type of diet or supplements would you suggest for a cat who is 15 years old with hyperthyroidism? Please leave a comment.