Talk:Aging in cats

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2018 and 17 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): 8DBienaime.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled

The age bit of indoor cats was changed as the previous wording implied that indoor cats would live to at least 21 years, rather the truth, which is that they can live that long, or longer, but it's not to be expected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.199.111.28 (talk) 21:24, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not only indoor cats can live to 21 years or more, because I have personally known 3 different outdoor cats that lived to at least 24 years. I have owned dozens of cats in my lifetime, and have never known an indoor cat that lived beyond 14-15 years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.156.224 (talk) 02:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I have an indoor cat and she is 18 years old this year. There's no sign of her slowing down either! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.167.254.182 (talk) 21:56, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Potentially even older cat?

Many reading around some of the old cat facts, and came across an article claiming a cat, by the name of Lucy (at 39 as of 2011) had outlived Creme Puff? Granted DM isn't the greatest source in the world, but those surrounding Cream Puff didn't seem entirely that much better. Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344271/Can-Lucy-39-really-oldest-cat-world.html

78.105.54.191 (talk) 18:43, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My cat tiger is 5 so 36 in human years and she's fat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.232.186.219 (talk) 11:12, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Daily Mail isn't the greatest source in the world like "ghost pepper" isn't the greatest milkshake flavour, but the important thing is to considertheir source. Here, it's "an elderly aunt" and "other people who can verify seeing her in the fish and chip shop in the early seventies."

Also, note the lack of confidence in the headline, compared to the usual facts. How sketchy does a story have to be to get that sort of treatment? And how great, exactly, is "ghost pepper"? 400 times greater than jalapeno, of course. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:31, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Easier Visualisation

Would anyone be able to make a graph showing human and cat years on the same axes, so that one can see the extent to which a cat's ageing differs from humans easily? 91.158.41.110 (talk) 20:34, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mean age outdoor cat

This mean age is based on data from the USA. So this is only valid in the USA. A lot of this dangers does not occur in Europe. So I think outdoor cats live longer there. Jms berends (talk) 05:59, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is absolutely no supported study that says that cats that are allowed outdoors have lifespans of three to five years; this might potentially be true of feral, non-neutered cats (though the data that does exist suggests this is an exaggeration), there is no evidence at all that there is a significantly reduced lifespan for indoor/outdoor cats, in our outside the US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:4C0:4001:D160:305F:162A:3FAC:1D5E (talk) 18:23, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Contradictory statements

It's said in the article, "there have been unverified claims of cats dying at ages greater than 30 years." And yet a few lines below, it's given a verified account of a cat dying at 38 years of age. Kumagoro-42 (talk) 07:26, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the wording to avoid the contradiction --Bruno413 (talk) 23:19, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Catster Source

The Catster source about a 15.1 year average lifespan contains no source for the statistic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarsus1983 (talk • contribs) 05:05, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, looking at the Catster source, it appears they just went to some random websites and averaged what the numbers they saw: "The numbers varied widely among all the sites we visited, ranging from 14 to 20 years. Based on the numbers we chronicled, the average lifespan of an indoor cat is 16.875 years." That's obviously an absurd way of calculating cat lifespan. It's not based on studies or any kind of actual data. Without any authoritative source of data, the line should be removed from the main article. Perhaps replaced with something like, "Outdoor cats face more dangers and thus have shorter lifespans than indoor cats, but just how much shorter is unclear." LLJKCicero (talk) 02:58, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading title?

I came to this page to find out about the effects of aging on feline health. However, the article is entirely devoted to cat's lifetime, i.e. how long they live. "Aging" is the process of getting old, so I think that the title is misleading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlanParkerFrance (talk • contribs) 15:13, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Information Literacy and Scholarly Discourse

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 June 2022 and 29 July 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sierraserpas (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Hennessey.lb.

— Assignment last updated by Atufail (talk) 01:05, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ref #11 is an incorrect link

the link and citation is for some biblical article 69.11.242.186 (talk) 08:12, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Life expectancy increase

I suspect this claim is incorrect: "The average lifespan of domestic cats has increased in recent decades. It has risen from seven years in the 1980s, to nine years in 1995, to about 15 years in 2021."

This paper cites a 1978 study to support the claim that cats "have an average life expectancy of 14 years." Nosecohn (talk) 06:49, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I share your suspicion. Soon after my family got its first pet in 1967, I read that 14 was typical. (That cat died of FLV at 13.) — This sentence in the lead paragraph is problematic: “The average lifespan of a domestic cat may range from 10 to 13 years.” An average is not a range. One might imagine that enough empirical statistics exist to pin down a mean – one number – and a standard deviation, with no “may”. —Tamfang (talk) 03:49, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised this claim has been allowed to stand. I provided a source above directly contradicting the quoted section. Here is another one:

From The New Basic Book of the Cat by William H. A Carr, 1978 edition, Page 110:

The typical lifespan of the cat used to be about twelve to fourteen years. But the advances in veterinary medicine have had the same effect on the life expectancy of the cat that human medical progress has had on man. Today the typical cat, properly cared for, probably has a life expectancy of about seventeen years or more, but this is affected by many factors. Diet is important, as is health care; trips should be made to the veterinarian whenever any serious illness appears.

Anecdotally, as someone who remembers 1980s, I can unequivocally say that the reality of cat life expectancy was supported by these two sources and has not changed appreciably in the intervening years. Nosecohn (talk) 05:43, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like sufficiently good sourcing to just revise the material; be WP:BOLD! It wouldn't hurt to have more recent material eventually, but it is better to have defensible material based on sources that have probably aged pretty well than indefensible material based on misunderanding of how math works. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:43, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I removed the claim. Thanks for the push. Nosecohn (talk) 09:55, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]