Our pet's longevity will depend on the care he or she receives throughout his or her life. A cat living in a home has a life perspective of more than 12 years. With a little surveillance and control, we'll get our animal to live as long as possible.
Cats, like most pets, age much faster than humans. In fact, a very common mistake is to think that every human year equals seven years of a cat. Most experts agree that feline aging is much faster during its first two years of life.
There is an equivalence table that reflects that when a cat turns one year old, it's actually as if he's turning 15. At two years old, the same cat would be a 24-year-old. From this age, each passing year ages approximately four years.
Cats usually live longer than dogs. While a stray cat presents a life expectancy of 3 to 6 years, one living in a home, has a perspective of more than 12 years. Even a well-groomed cat can live up to 20 years or more.
You could say that the longevity of a cat depends fundamentally on the care it receives. Felines are mainly characterized by being very curious and independent animals. These traits of his personality are what he does, that they are continuously exposed to dangers. But simply with a little vigilance and control, we will get our pet out of a safe and healthy way from some incident and live as many years as possible.
Let's learn about the most common dangers that our pet can expose:
CAT HAZARDS WHEN YOU LEAVE HOME
As we said, cats are very independent and curious. In addition to the extent that our pet grows, its need to go out on the street increases. Ideally, our feline wouldn't leave the house, and if it did, it was under our supervision. The most common dangers our pet is subjected to when leaving home are:
Accidents
A home cat, in its first raids, has few survival skills, and the chances of having any incidents are high. It is very likely that on your first exits you will find some road to cross, where you can be hit. It may also run into some trap or it may be attacked by some dog. Other accidents can happen when crossing from one roof to another, or when climbing a fence. They can also eat poisoned food or get locked up somewhere.
Contagion of diseases
The chance of developing contagious diseases is very common in a cat that walks a lot. When a cat is in heat, fights between felines to get the female are very common. Wounds arising from these quarrels cause serious infections and the spread of disease.
Possibility of unwanted litters
When a cat is in heat, she will have an imperative need to leave home to mate with other cats. In fact, the chances of her coming back pregnant if she gets out of the house are so high. That is why it is essential to avoid departures when our pet is in this state.
On the other hand, it must be borne in mind, that cats that are born from an unwanted litter have many possibilities of living an unfortunate life.
Most experts advise castration as the best remedy to the exits of our animal. The need to leave the home decreases noticeably when our cat is neutered.
CAT HAZARDS INSIDE THE HOME
For a cat to live inside a home, it doesn't guarantee that his life will be long. In fact when our pet lives with us at home, faces certain dangers, let's see some of them:
Risk of obesity
Obesity is very common in a domestic cat if you don't have a little care. The cat that lives inside the house is hardly motivated to exercise. He usually spends most of the day sleeping or lying down. In addition, he does not have to fight for the sustenance of his food and his feeder is always available.
To control obesity in home cats, it is important to measure the amount of food you eat a day. It's good to provide you with low-calorie feed with a moderate level of fiber. It is also advisable to encourage you to exercise, with balls and toys for cats.
Continuous mud
The mounting of a feline's hair is governed by photo periods. Cats living on the street are subjected to temperature changes and only lose hair in certain seasonal periods.
However, the homemade cat is exposed to more hours of natural and artificial light, with a more or less constant temperature all year round. Let's say that in winter it does not go cold by the heating and in summer there is no heat from the air conditioning. This causes your mounts not to occur in natural cycles. The result is that the animal is constantly losing hair throughout the year.
To promote the health of the hair of home cats that are constantly mounting, it is advisable to give them specific foods for the care of their hair and skin.
Hairballs
Another common sign in homemade cats are hairballs. The balls may also have hairs, food residues, gastric secretions or plant materials.
A healthy cat brushes by licking. Its tongue is rough due to the presence of a kind of spicules or papillae that act as a brush. With his licking, he drags his dead hair and swallows it. Subsequently this hair transits through the digestive tract and is usually excreted by faces or regurgitated, causing in the feline a kind of uncomfortable dry cough. Sometimes, when you ingest too much hair, or if the digestion process is disrupted by a problem, hairballs build up in your stomach or intestine.
To avoid the formation of hairballs it is advisable to frequently brush our cat and administer appropriate products for disposal.
Domestic accidents
Cats, besides curious, are extremely playful and inside the home they always look for something to play with. Electrical cables from Televisions, stereos or lamps arouse great interest in them and will always look for them to bite them. To prevent them from suffering a shock, it is convenient to camouflage them. In the hardware stores there are elements called cable-channel that can be very useful to cover the cables.
Threads, pins, medicines, some toxic plant or bones of food scraps, are also a danger to our cat, because if they are within reach, it will almost certainly bite them.
Cooking is one of your favorite places, especially if we are cooking. They will always come close to the smell of a good stew, so you have to be very careful that they do not burn with the stoves or with the ceramic hob. We also have to be careful when putting the washing machine, as it is not surprising, that our animal is taking a nap in the drum. It is also common to find them inside cupboards or in a bag. They will always investigate in the most inhospitable places in the house.
We should try not to have the windows open if we live on a floor, since there is also the possibility that they fall and although it is true that they endure falls from high altitudes, they are not infallible and a bad fall can become something regrettable.
If we want our cat to live as long as possible, we must be responsible and ensure its food. A person fed junk food doesn't live as long as a person fed a Mediterranean diet, do he? If we make sure that your diet is from high quality natural ingredients, your quality of life will certainly be superior. Our cat will have stronger health and will be longer. We can find high quality ranges in NAKU, a company that produces high quality cat food, suitable also for human consumption.