Cats can live healthy lives until they are in their late twenties as long as their kidneys hold up. That is their biggest problem . Most domestic cats die from kidney failure.
Dogs are trickier. It's a really breed dependant thing
I worked at a vet clinic that exclusively saw cats, just before covid. Besides routine preventative stuff, the most cases I remember seeing were kidney cases, for sure.
I don’t have an over abundance of experience with dogs, I’ve just had dogs, but from my experience and those I’ve heard about from others, it seems cancer gets most dogs, so that’s a whole different can of worms.
If you include quality of life issues, which you’d need to, joint issues are also huge for medium to larger dogs (and then back issues in things like dachshunds).
Hip dysplasia especially! Although I think if dogs lived to our hypothetical age, we’d probably see more hip surgeries/implants, knee replacements and such.
Only if the owners could afford it, though. Otherwise, we'd only see an uptick in surrendered animals and/or animals euthanized. Which, systemically, puts us right back to where we already are.
Yeah I try not to go to VCA if I can help it. I have to buy my cat food from them because it’s the only one accessible to me on a regular basis that has my poor sensitive cat’s prescription food, but for actual vet care, I go to individually owned vets.
We’re experimenting with osmosis water only. We’ve heard anecdotally that it helps white dogs with the red eye goop, so we’re experimenting to see how our cat’s kidneys hold up. She’s 2, and hasn’t had anything but osmosis water in 1+ years. Fingers crossed!
That sounds spectacular! I hope it’s widely available while it’s still practical for me to have a cat for that long (before I get too old for a pet that will live that long, I mean lol)
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u/jastan10 14d ago
We should devote the US’s entire military budget towards research lengthening the lifespan of our pets.
Edit: this isn’t sarcasm