Cats also play with our perceptions by acting more confident, and older, than they feel.
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Most kittens are born quick-minded, and with nurturance, they only become more so. We can’t go by size to discover a kitten’s age, since cats can vary so much in size, and can have growth spurts at different ages to thwart best guesses.
Under three months should be thought of a helpless infant. Under six weeks, a kitten needs veterinary care and possibly bottle feeding if they are underweight and hungry all the time. How to care for the kitten from six weeks to three months old.
They do their best not to act like a helpless infant, but it’s an act. They need cuddling and soft voices.
How can we tell a young kitten’s age? They are very young if their ears are floppy at the top, if they have have a high, sharp kind of mew, if they seem to conk out quickly, and they are messy eaters.
From three months to nine months, a kitten is in their childhood. And what a lovely childhood it is. They are far sturdier, and actually more fun, since they also do not have the deeper thinking of the “teenager cat.”
The teenager cat is from nine months, to over three years, old. We should still think of them as a kitten, just as we think of a high-schooler as not quite grown up. They aren’t. Not quite.
They can be very trying. They test all the boundaries, and the ones they remember, they pretend we do not. A kitten can double in size from the beginning to the end. The larger the cat will be, the longer their maturation process will take, with cobby types taking the longest.
Once a cat grows up, what then? When fully mature, a cat is ready for the best part, in many ways. It’s such a happy medium, the fully adult cat, from maturation to about ten.
They fill out compared to the leggy teenager cat. Their muscles are ready for feats of strength instead of supersonic hallway racing. They do love thinking, but this is, of course, a good thing.
The older cat, from ten to fifteen years old, can spend this time as a bit older than their fully mature self the whole time, or they can slow down quite a bit, during the same five year span. As they gradually show signs of becoming elderly cats, we should offer extra support.
From fifteen to over twenty, senior cats can live a slow, happy life. They are actually even smarter than before, but need special care because their body is quite old.
Some cats can cruise along just fine, to twenty and beyond, with longer sleeping periods, decreased tolerance for idiot-cats, and wanting more attention.
Older cats need this grounding from us to help them keep sharp as they get older. This keeps them from developing mental problems as they age and lose the keenness of their senses. They are losing feedback as they age, and they need more now.
In any rescue situation where the cat, of whatever age, gives confusing cues about their age, remember that their appearance can be deceptive if they have not recovered from a stressful experience when we encounter them.
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