Six changes. The third arrives around the age of eleven and looks like a cleanliness problem when it is a problem of access.
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A cat ages without showing it, because hiding weakness is a survival strategy of the species. These six changes are expected, and five of them are met with very simple adjustments.
An older cat sleeps longer and changes where it sleeps: it gives up the high perches for warm spots it can reach. That shift is the first visible sign, and it is usually read as a preference.
The adjustment is simple: a warm bed at floor level, in a quiet room but not an isolated one — an older cat wants peace, not solitude.
Feline osteoarthritis is very common after the age of ten and very rarely diagnosed, because a cat almost never limps: it gives up instead. It climbs in two stages, picks lower perches, or stops going where it used to go.
Intermediate steps up to its usual spots make the climb effortless. It takes a few minutes to set up, and it changes the day of a twelve-year-old cat.
An older cat that goes beside the tray has almost never turned dirty. The rim has become too high to step over, the tray too far away, or the spot means crossing a cold corridor at night.
A tray with a low rim, a second tray on the storey where it sleeps: those two changes settle most cases. Punishing it, or switching litter, settles nothing, because that is not where the problem lies.
A lasting increase in water intake in an older cat is never trivial: it is the warning sign of several chronic illnesses common at that age.
The useful benchmark is knowing how much it drank before. A measured bowl over a week, twice a year after the age of ten, gives a reference worth more than an impression.
Three main causes, and two of them are medical: failing hearing, an age-related cognitive disorder, or an illness that brings restlessness and thirst. The third is simply a change of rhythm.
Answering with silence, or ignoring it, tells none of the three apart. A cat that starts miaowing at night after the age of ten deserves a check-up before being written off as demanding.
A coat that loses its shine, knots appearing on the lower back or along the flanks: these are the areas a cat reaches by twisting round. Less suppleness, less grooming.
Gentle, regular brushing takes over what it no longer does, and it is also the moment when you spot the lumps, the scabs and the tender patches you would not otherwise see.