I had a cat just like that....my beautiful Esther...she ended up howling like a banshee and did not know if it was New Year or New York....but then again she was the grand old age of 18.

My old guy Sparky used to get out of his bed and go looking for his litter tray. the look of pure delight when he found it was hilarious. It had been in the same place for years. He was 21 when he died. His better half, Twinkle, was as sharp as a tack til the day she died bless her. She was 23.

does this effect specific kinds of cats?

Both mine were just black moggies. Both bought from the Cat Protection League In Casselbank Street, Leith.

Gonnaenodaethat...that is a remarkable age for your feline friends to live to...they must have been well loved and cared for, and in rude health! Unfortunately kidney problems are common in cats and two of mine had to be euthanised for this reason.

My cat is 18 and occasionally has bouts of Alzheimer's. He sometimes doesn't recognize me. He forgets that his bowl is full of food, even though he ate a few bites and walked away only minutes earlier. He also sometimes forgets which of two identical backdoors is the one he should enter (we live in a duplex). Other than that he is in perfect health. He's still able to catch and kill the doves and rats just like he did when he was a young pup.

My 14 year old dog is being treated for what can best be termed Alzheimer's disease. He is being treated holistically with ProNeurozone. I don't know if it is available worldwide, but the results have been remarkable.

will peta object to cats receiving alzheimer drugs? or will they allow testing on people to solve this vile disease?

I have a 13 old male cat who goes out and in and in and out. He never goes more than 15 ft from the backyard and is back in 15 minutes, summer and winter. We followed him and he never does anything but sniff the ground. This behavior has just started. They are running blood tests right now for diabetes, liver & kidney disease. He has other vague symptoms. The vet called it "Sick Cat Syndrome". Could he have Alzheimer's? Can Alzheimer's in cats be a complication of one of these diseases?

To #10

Your cat could possibly be going blind. I had an Abyssinian that went slowly blind but he lived to the ripe old age of 18 1/2 years.

In addition to the tests you're having done, you may want to see a veterinary eye doctor.

our cat has dementia, he is using his cat box backwards his rear is hanging out spilling out on the floor he goes in head first and cant seem to get the hang of it before the dementia he was so paticular in his toliet habit's,tammy sedalia mo

Cats are stupid anyway, how would anyone know if they had alzheimers? Are our tax dollars being wasted on "cat alzheimers?' Outrageous...

Cats are stupid anyway, how would anyone know if they had alzheimers? Are our tax dollars being wasted on "cat alzheimers?' Outrageous...

Folks, you have to remember that our brains are very small and we must not over react! Sometimes I do things just to confuse you. I don't have Alzheimer's, I'm just a prankster!

I go outside every ten minutes and run back in real fast. I take a nimble of food, check out what's happening inside, and then rush back outside. I do this all day long just to annoy my "owner"....should I be checked for Alzheimer's? Now I'm very worried.

Back in 1995 I lost my original two cats, one was 13.5, the other 15.5. Both had
a form of feline "dementia/alzheimer's",
for each one uncharacteristically became
withdrawn, unsociable, and wailed at night. The oldest would stand in the mid
dle of the kitchen, and forget why he was
there(to eat). It was sad to watch, unable to do anything.

Junior, I see you are up to your old tricks again. Someday this will catch up with you and it won't be so amusing!

Alzheimer's or Mad Cow disease??...I ask you.
Commercial cat & dog food are the scrapings off the slaughter house floor and worse...all the by-products such as brain & spinal column that is the red zone for harboring the miscreant protein. Cat food, also, is loaded with fish ( for flavour), most of which is unfit even for humans to eat today because of the heavy presence of mercury & other toxins.
Consider giving your pets a raw food diet that comes from free-range livestock along with a high quality kibble for complete nutrition. Their digestive tract enzymes are designed for raw food.
I began to give my cats raw liver, kidney, etc. when I tired of throwing out CAN AFTER CAN of cat food that was hardly touched...a waste of money.
I lightly braise the free-range (cheaper cuts) just for
possible processing bacteria although my Vet. said they have a natural resistance to all that. Make sure any braising is only browns the outside...the near whole of inside should remain raw. Good Luck & God Bless us all!.
M.K.

P.S. from Margot K.
Raw ground turkey is fine, too, and a big favorite...no braising needed. For elderly cats who have touble with kibble (missing teeth) add Gerber's Rice Cereal for babies mixed smooth with water for a near whole spectrum of vitamins & minerals. Soaking kibble in water first & then adding to raw meat is good, also.
They need a certain amount of glucose found in grains for brain function. In nature they would get these grains from the bellies of birds, mice & other small prey. All part of replicating their diet as nature intended.

check www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
search on feline + encephalopathy or
feline+ prion or canine + prion or either animal + alzheimer

check www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
search on feline + encephalopathy or
feline+ prion or canine + prion or either animal + alzheimer

Hey JLOW90210--
Talk about alzheimers! Check your dble-post!! In addition, the research was done in Scotland therefore your precious tax dollars did not contribute, dont b such a hater!

My sweet kitty is 18 years old and fine in every respect except one: she forgets where her litterbox is. This has required some intense retraining, including shutting off the rooms in which she chooses to 'powder her nose'. We've changed our brand of litter, also. It seems to have helped but we must remain vigilant.

Add blindness to this and it's another sad ailment for a pet owner to deal with.

Add blindness to this and it's another sad ailment for a pet owner to deal with.

JLOW90210 wrote:

"Cats are stupid anyway, how would anyone know if they had alzheimers? Are our tax dollars being wasted on "cat alzheimers?' Outrageous..."

I wonder if a cat in Beverly Hills would be smart enough to understand that his owner is not paying taxes in Edinburgh, Scotland??

Research on animals may be an attempt to understand if other animals share a common characteristic also found in humans. Oftentimes such discoveries will lead to progress in finding cures for humans. That makes such research very valuable indeed.

How can one tell if a cat is demented? Our little puss since she was a kitten will be walking calmly across the room, and suddenly jump straight up, spit and swat at nothing. One vet I know says simply , "Oxygen is a drug for cats".

Each of my two alley cats lived to be 19 anda half years old. Kidney problems finally took each of them. They were totally indoor cats, but they never showed signs of kitty Alzheimers. Perhaps research with cats can help find a cure for cats and humans. I certainly hope so since Alzheimers runs in my family.

My Tommy is very old and very fat. Hes so fat he can't even lick his bum. :(

As a proud Feline-American, I'm all for medical research on animals for any disease. But folks, can we restrict the research to those pesky mice?

Look, getting old has been tough on the big people too. I think mine are getting Alzheimers. To get their attention, I half to damn tear up the couch clawing on the thing before one of them will wake up. THEY KNOW when I need them to go swing that wall back so I can go out and take a dump and lick the rest of that chipmunk I ripped up yesterday. Why do they act like they've never done this before - and complain about the time of the morning? Sometimes at night they're out in the yard, calling my name, making these stupid sounds, clapping their hands - for what? I sit and watch them from the bushes. Big people are sure goofy. Glad it's warm behind the big wall, though. Sure like sleeping up on the top of the couch in the sun and staring at nothing all day. What a great life!

Fortunately my cats and I are loosing our minds at the same rate; so, after 14 years, we are equally silly.

My baby, spellbound, (named so because of his beautiful spellbinding blue eyes) died the day after mother's day this year. I was convinced that he had alzheimers, and told everybody and got poo pooed, even by the vet. She said it was just age, as he was 16 and a half when he passed. He had a blindness in one eye, but some days it was clear as could be. My oldest son called him "bump-n-go kitty" because it would take him 3 or 4 tries to go around a corner. We eventually had to put all of his things (litter box, food and water dish, bed) in a central location because he would get lost or "forget" where he was going or what he was doing. It was very sad, and I do hope that there is a kitty heaven because if any feline deserves to be there, it's him.

You wanna hear something really dumb that my big people did this week? They stuck this big plastic thing that kinda looks like a tree in my front room, right smack in front of the window where I prefer to reflect on the events of the world and watch the squirrels run. Had to hop up on it and clear a bunch of shiny-looking things out of the way to get a better view, One of my big people came in and started all this hollering. Hey, you stuck this here, right? I told him. They can't understand anything I tell them. What kind of disease is that?

"herekittykitty" from Iowa. Tough to hear about Tommy. He used to be one real lickass cat.

HereKittyKitty wrote:

My Tommy is very old and very fat. Hes so fat he can't even lick his bum. :(

I say:

I can't lick my bum either.
Never could. Cats are
clearly the superior species.

My big people leave the radio on all day long. No opposable thumb, can't turn it off. So I just heard Rush talking about this column and "his" cat. HUH? HIS CAT??

Guys,did you know you were famous?
Rush Limbaugh's radio programme which I am listening to,has just mentioned the Scotsman and is reading your comments on the air.Hecate #1 you have been heard by million of Americans.
I thought I would die laughing!

Look, one night while one of my big people was tapping on this tray of little square-looking things, I went over and sat on it and gave him my usual look. Got an ear rub out of it. Since then I like to walk back and forth over the tray throughout the day, especially when one of them is sitting in front of it. I was laying on it a minute ago when this whole string started sorry got to go the big people just walked in I have to go curl up on the couch like I've been there all day.

So sad to hear about your Tommy, #34 ("My Tommy is very old and very fat. Hes so fat he can't even lick his bum"). I assume Tommy is a cat? If so, a compassionate owner is duty-bound to assist his beloved pet.

Back now. Wasn't the big person after all, just one of the little ones that makes all the noise. Me and the other guys heard about spellbound - #38, sounds like you did the best you could for the old guy. I'm coming up on 15 this year, and dang if I haven't already started loosing track of what I was doing last. Seems like a whole day will go by and I can't figure out what I did - if anything. I find myself walking along the same little path out behind the big place, sniffing and looking for something. I never seem to find it.

Need to cough up this hairball, excuse me.

About Boonda #45, I do not know what you are talking about politician-slur. These cats have nothing to do with politicians. This matter in here is talking about the health from the Edinburgh scientist, not politics.

To Jlow90210.......figures another airhead from a wanna be star, who wishes he lived in 90210, who can say without any thought, that cats are stupid! Can you spell "ignorant"?

And while we're piling on, Jlow90210 has lousy grammar, that would be 'our' not 'are'. Duh.

What about an old cat that's going blind, how do you keep him mentally alert if he can't see the DVD?

Read this to your old cat, he'll enjoy it!

http://www.jibjab.com/jokebox/jokebox/jibjab/id/193187/jo...

My big people think all they have to do is shake that food box. Sometimes they'll pull it out and just rattle it to see if I'll do anything. I hate it when they do that.

The Mewvie sounds like something Missy might enjoy. I hear they play wild as mountain dew up there.

"Everything comes to those who wait...except a cat."

# 15-You think cats are stupid, huh? Read on...

A man absolutely hated his wife's cat and decided to get rid of him one day by driving him 20 blocks from his home and leaving him at the park. As he arrived home, the cat was walking up the driveway.

The next day he decided to drive the cat 40 blocks away. He put the beast out and headed home. Driving back up his driveway, there was the cat!

He kept taking the cat further and further, and the cat would always beat him home. At last he decided to drive a few miles away, turn right, then left, past the bridge, then right again and another right until he reached what he thought was a safe distance from his home and left the cat there.

Hours later the man calls home to his wife: "Jen, is the cat there?"

"Yes", the wife answers, "why do you ask?"

Frustrated, the man answered, "Put the little bastard on the phone, I'm lost and need directions.

Number 22 is on to something. This explains why those on skid row act strange, won't get jobs, don't have homes. They all have mad cow. Someone call HHS...alert the media...this is a travisty. Do democrats eat cat food?

#22-I suggest a raw diet of mice and birds, no sauteing or braising required. And what kind of liver and kidney's, from beef? What could be worse for an aging cat's kidneys than rich organ meat? Besides, I've never seen a cat take down a cow for dinner!

And Dave from San Francisco, a vet eye doctor? Surely you jest? I can just picture him asking my cat, 'Okay, which is clearer, this way or that?' as he has his little face pushed up to the eye machine!

Rush Limbaugh is an idiot!

Who's Rush Limbaugh? And for that matter, who's George W. Bush? Are they cat scientists?

#45 - Boonda? What kind of a crazy name is that for a cat? I have to say I must agree with Missy, politics has no place on this forum - especially all that communist stuff! Shouldn't you be busy kicking out all the military from SF instead of posting on a Scottish Forum??

And to #52 - don't they have closed caption in the "Big Valley"?

Excuse the above redundacy. Everything worth knowing I've learned from our 19 yr old one-eyed Persian: Avoid unnecessary activity (stretching will suffice), whine when you don't get your way, always cover up the evidence, look for a sunny spot in the winter and a shady one in summer and run and hide when the dogs come. As he has aged, he's become more vocal. Is that a sign of dementia.

My favorite meal is a tuna fish on a croussant.

#61 - What happened to the other eye? Just curious.

To hell with the Mewvies, my cat can just do the damn crosswords to keep his mind nimble, without cheating, I might add. Who needs closed caption?

Yeah, right, Middletoes is it? Closed caption was a suggestion, I was trying to be helpful. Apparently you've never heard of the "hearing impaired"? How insensitive!

Look, cat people,if your damn cat is that bad off-deaf, blind, walking around howling at nothing, running into walls- put him down. Have the old man give him a 22 in his skull. End of suffering, and no cabbage wasted on 'research'. Works for me!

How terribly cruel!!

Cats are people too, you know!

No, it's instant! And if you think a cat is the same as a person, then perhaps you have Alzheimers yourself. Have you been running into walls?Watch yourself, dude!

"Cat's are people too" was a joke "Hunter". But they do have feelings. If I do have Alzheimer's, are you going to "give me a 22 in my skull?"

Hey Hunter Thompson!

You sound very angry. Chill man. Chill.

I'm afraid you're going to shoot yourself out of a cannon.

Your fellow human,
Boonda from Berkley

This is the problem with cat lovers, their frickin' liberals! I'm not angry, just a realist.

Especially you Boonda. Berkley, need I say more?

This whole 'cats with alzheimers' thing is irritating, anyway. I think more people think like me. A cat only lives so long, so why spend a fortune to prolong his agony for your benefit?

Hey Hunter Thompson

That's not cool, man!

I'm not liberal. I'm a socialist.

Socialized medicine would put a stop to this outrageous medical threat to people and kitties.

Hunter "Bootsie" Thompson aka Michael Schiavo!

And cats have nine lives anyway!

Liberal, socialist, it's the same thing now days. There was a time when being called a liberal was acompliment. Just ask Alan Colmes.
When I was in Korea back in the day, I was taken back by how differently they view cats-like the animals they are. Not like in the US and other western countries. I hear they'e quite tasty. I think I tasted a cat dish once, but I was too drunk to remember.Speaking of which...

You're giving bad vibes. Frankly creeping me out, man.

I figured you'd be a older war monger type dude.

Very angry dude.

Vote Green!

Can't we all just get along?

I'm not angry dammit, unless I've had a few, then don't piss me off!

Obviously, Hunter is an anal neocon who lacks empathy for anything on 4 legs. I wonder who will put a 22 in YOUR thick skull when you start wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood, and have to wear diapers. Dude.

I had an a Burmese cat who definitely developed dementia. She had been highly intelligent all her life, till a couple of years before her death. Her character seemed to change completely.

What a good laugh I got this morning, thank you all! But informative too. My 10 year old is starting to miss the litter box and/or not bother to cover up what he did, and he's meowing more. Also lets me pet him and then tries to bite, but I think he's playing (I hope). And cats are NOT stupid! Ever here the report about the study done with putting a dog in a room and piping in some kind of fumes? It was years ago, so please forgive me for not having all the details. The dog ran around and around until he fell over dizzy. Then they tried a cat in the room. The cat walked over to where it was coming into the room, and he laid down on top of it! WHO'S SMARTER???

Okay, we believe you Hunter - you're not angry. We just hope the kitties are hiding when you hit that bottle!

Now, mkmkm, you are right on the money! We cats are smart because we are so adored! You can't believe how pampered I am! I rule this house, I'm adorable and cuddly. But the best thing about us is our wondeful sense of humor, we poke fun at ourselves! And Hunter, too.

By the way, how's your head this morning?

Maybe his cat wrestled his 22 away from him and put him out of his misery!

65....Hunter 'Bootsie'....you need a boot up the Jacksie pal...If a 22 in the skull worked for you we wouldnt have to read your mad ravings now would we dear?....ps try Viagra it might help with the frustration...miaouw..purrrrrrrrh!!

Hey guys, don't be too hard on Hunter. Did any of you notice where he lives? "The Compound"! Hes a nut case, case closed!!!