Happy Cats, Healthy Minds: Enrichment for Senior Felines | The Feline Wellness Summit with Dr. Marci Koski

 Welcome to the cat dad show. My name is Scott Colby and I'm going to share with you a clip of the interview I did with Dr. Marcy Kosky, where I asked her, what is one simple thing every cat parent can do today to make their cat's life more enriched and fulfilling, especially as they get older, those senior cats, Dr.

Marcy is a certified feline behavior and training consultant. And this interview was. part of my feline wellness summit. She was one of the 21 guests that I had on. So this is just a short clip of that interview. But if you would like to listen to the entire interview, as well as the interviews with the other 20 feline wellness experts, just go to feline wellness summit dot com.

But for now, enjoy the clip.

Um, to answer your question, I'd say one thing that pet parents can do is to really keep up with play sessions for their cats.

Um, If there's one thing that you should be doing on a regular basis with your cats, no matter their age, it is play sessions. And, um, sure, senior cats might slow down a little bit, um, depending on their, their health and statuses. They get older. Um but play is so good for cats, not only in a physical way, but also a mental way as well.

We have to remember that cats are predatory little beasties at heart. And more than anything they they like to hunt, and it's just ingrained in them to that hunting instinct is ingrained to them, and they want to play. Um so So giving them that opportunity to let that inner predatory beastie out is one of the most important things you can do for your cat, no matter what their age.

I love that. And you know, you mentioned senior cats, which we both have soft spots for. You have four senior cats currently,

which is

amazing. Um, and I've had senior cats in the past. Why is play so important? I know it's important for all cats, but in particular, why is it so important for senior cats? And how does play change as cats age?

I know I mentioned I had a cat Mia that passed away at age 20 last year. Um, And, you know, her last few years, she had definitely slowed down and it was hard, you know, sometimes we think of play like cats running around, you know, as if they were kittens and that's certainly not the case for a lot of seniors.

So, um, yeah. So why is it so important for senior cats? And then what can we do if our cats have slowed down and they're, they're not chasing the feather one, they're looking at it like. What do you expect me to run around? What other maybe type of play modalities can we use for our senior cats,

right? Okay, so there's a lot to unpack in that question.

Um, but as cats age, play is still really important for them because it keeps both their body and their mind active. And we don't want either their bodies or their minds to atrophy. with time or just being sedentary. Um, movement keeps us healthy. Brain activity keeps us healthy. And what we want to do when we are playing, especially with our older cats, is recognize that yes, they do slow down.

And a lot of cats are dealing with Things like osteoarthritis, which creates pain and we don't want to injure our cats. So we don't want to make them run around like young cats do, because that's not realistic for a lot of older kitties.

Understanding the Prey Sequence

But what we can do is take a look at the prey sequence. The prey sequence is what cats do when they hunt.

So there's four steps in the prey sequence. There's they're staring, stalking and chasing, pouncing and grabbing, and then performing a kill bite. And we can easily. take our cat through those steps, no matter what their age is. Um, and we have to remember that not all of those steps have to be incredibly active.

So, simply getting your cat to stare, get in that predatory mindset by staring at something and observing something that they focus in on as a predator can be stimulating. So things like cat TV are good, or putting a bird feeder outside a window is good. Um, just getting that cat in that predatory mindset and initiating that prey sequence is, um, mentally enriching.

Now for stalking and chasing, that's going to be slowed down a little bit with senior kitties. But, um, one of my favorite things to do, um, well, especially with my older cat, Jesse, who passed away, he was 19 when he passed away. But even up until then, what we would do was I would take one of those, um, cat dancers or cat charmer.

It was the cat charmer wand. It was the, the. Stick wand with that long felt strip. It's usually rainbow colored. Um, and I would just run that by him and he would tag it like this with his paws. Um, so that's more of the, um, pouncing and grabbing phase. But it still was active enough so that he could feel like he was getting it.

And you can also do things like rolling balls in front of your cat. They don't have to get up and run around like small, small kitties. And then, of course, there's the kill bite phase. And I always found that, um, kicker toys or even some smaller catnip toys, like the catnip banana. Um, everybody in my house loves the catnip banana.

And they still love to eat it. hang on to that thing, claw it and bite it. Um, so there are ways of taking your cat through that prey sequence, even as they get older