A year or so ago I wrote about what I had learned from our aging cat, Moses. Here’s an update on the old fellow:

Moses turned 15 on Halloween and, while he maybe isn’t senile, he is definitely getting ever quirky. For periods of weeks, he tends to get in his head that he needs or wants to do certain things that are just sort of, well, weird.

For example, for a while he was determined not just to sleep on our bed, but on my pillow, right next to my head. Despite his high-decibel purring, this wouldn’t have been a problem had he not also decided that every now and then he needed to spend an hour or so cleaning himself, again about an inch from my ear. That noise was too much to sleep through.

Then he spent a few weeks’ worth of nights sleeping on our bathroom counter, then a few weeks in the bathtub, and now he favors the toilet seat, day or night, which means when nature calls, I often have to find an alternate bathroom because I don’t have the heart to disturb him.

His bathroom habits also include sitting on the edge of the tub when one of us is in it and drinking the bathwater, no matter how warm or soapy it is.

Occasionally, Moses still wants to be out at night, but we just can’t let him do that anymore; his ability to defend himself against raccoons or anything else simply isn’t up to snuff. A couple months ago, we let him when he scratched at the door at about 3 a.m., and something beat him up pretty good. He’s still limping, and a collection of abcessed shoulder wounds haven’t yet fully healed.

He’s pretty bony looking these days too, but he still eats, drinks and uses the litter box as opposed to making messes anywhere, so I’d say all in all life is pretty good for him. He’s old, but he’s happy. There are a lot worse ways to be.

And here’s a photo of him taken one day a couple months ago, just before he curled up for a four-hour midday nap:

moses tub