It’s believed that cats are more mature in years than dogs and even humans but how mature are they?
We’re hoping that this article will solve these questions and provide you with answers by tapping into some of the leading experts in this field and noting on some of their studies.
According to some veterinarians and pet experts, sometimes knowing a cat age in human years can also help you understand your cat’s physiological changes, breed and family history.
Eventually, the age information will assist you on how to better care for your furry friends because relatively, a cats age can also provide information on factors that will help guide you on your pet’s diet, lifestyle, and veterinary care.
In addition to this, finding out the cat life expectancy can turn up a lot of information on your cat’s behavior and proper care.
Similar to humans, female cats live a year or so longer than male cats. This applies to cats that are well taken care of and are usually indoors, that is.
While the lifespan of feral cats, or those that live outdoors and are more at risk of getting sick or dying of starvation, it’s hard to determine accurately but some are reported to have lived up to only 4 to 5 years.
This confirms one expert suggestion that the environment certainly plays an important role in the cat’s life expectancy since feral cats are more prone to accidents.
So you now may be wondering, how long do cats live?
If your cat is properly looked after, it can live up to an average of 15 years, which is equivalent to about 76 in human years.
This means that in the first year of the kittens’ lives, they are already developed to the equivalent age of a 15-year-old human child!
Although not all cats can stay as long as we want them to, the average life span of a common cat is 12-15 years but they can live up to 21 years or more, by that time you and I should be in our nineties.
That seems like enough time to bond with your furry feline friends. Bringing up your cat with proper care, nutrition and regular veterinary visits on top of having optimal health and good genes, her well-nourished, well-exercised body will probably live longer than those years and than other cats.
By comparing human years to cat years, we can see that there’s a wide gap.
Oddly enough, there are also other ways to determine the age of your cat.
One way is to count their teeth. Kittens will have 26 deciduous teeth and adult cats will have 30. Hold on there… before you go open up your cat’s mouth and start counting, check out her tartar buildup while you’re at it.
You see, another way of determining her age would be by examining her teeth’s tartar buildup and teeth deterioration.
Obviously, cats that are just a year old will have no yellow discoloration and no wear and tear in their teeth. The adults, however, will have teeth discoloration and weak teeth albeit they are cared well and groomed regularly.
A cat’s fur is also another way to verify cat years to human years. A kitten’s fur is somewhat lighter in color and usually darkens as they mature.
Like humans, cats also develop gray hair with age. Due to age, older felines sometimes clean themselves less often and less thoroughly than the kittens.
This is mainly because their age has made it too tiresome for them to do so. As a result, you’ll see patches and clumps of fur in older cats that can also make their fur look dull.
The results of years can also be found in a cat’s nails and paws. As they age, their nails will harden and become brittle and most of their claws may lose the ability to retract.
Older cats also develop cloudiness in their eyes and tend to sleep for longer periods of time than kittens, just like grandpa and grandma.
Although there’s a ring of truth to these claims, there is really no reliable scientific method for calculating exactly how old your cat is compared to human years but there are continuing studies to lay claim to these methods.
It’s often conceptualized that one human year is equivalent to seven cat years but in reality a one-year-old cat is far more mature than a seven-year-old child.
There are studies that suggest the first two years of a cat’s life are approximately equal to the first 25 years of a human life. Thereafter, each additional human year is equivalent to four cat years.
Cats age faster when they’re kittens; eventually this slows down as they get older. One moment they are so cute and full of fur like a ball of yarn, another moment they are demanding and pesky.
At six months of age, a female cat can already reproduce. At the age of one, the bones of your cat would have stopped growing.
This occurs in humans at approximately 21 years of age, give or take a few years and depending on the gender.
So, a year old cat is roughly equivalent to a 24-year-old person. From that point on, cats age approximately four years for every one year.
Did you know that the oldest recorded age for a cat is 34 years? So, that is like what – 110?
While this is certainly not an exact science, the cat years chart below should offer a reasonable guideline as to how cats age compared to humans. Otherwise, you can always go ahead and count your cat’s teeth.
Cat Years Human Years
1 15
2 24
3 28
4 32
5 36
6 40
7 44
8 48
9 52
10 56
11 60
12 64
13 68
14 72
15 76
16 80
17 84
18 88
19 92
20 96
