Arthritic 12 year old cat- solutions ?

[Killashandra]

Hello,

I have a 12 year old cat named Rosie. For the past while I've noticed that she occasionally walks a bit stiff and gingerly, especially when she jumps of my bed (which is a bit high and one of her favourite sleeping spots). My mother took her to the vet, who confirmed that she has arthritis. However he did not prescribe her anything or suggest mesures to take to make her more comfortable. Now I've looked on the net and seen stuff about orthopedic beds, vitamin supplements, cod liver oil,etc and naturally I don't know how much weight to give this info. What are some practical steps that I can take to prevent as much discomfort as possible (given that she's 12 years old) ?

[Lucky Rescue]

You could discuss the use of Adequan, along with glucosamine/chondroitin to ease your cat's arthritis. This combination seems to help some cats.

You can also use foot stools to help her get up on beds or sofas.

[Snooky'sMom]

I had a cat that had arthritis. My vet put him on a drug for it which helped but overall the best thing I found was the liquid glucosamine. At least with glucosamine there's no side effects. The hard part is getting them to take it. He didn't like it in his food so I was forced to give it to him in a little syringe daily. Cats are notorious for being diffucult when hiding stuff in their food.

Oh, and he had difficulty getting up on the bed too. The new mattresses are so high nowadays so I put little homemade stairs on the side of the bed so he could get up and down easily. He looked at it in disgust at first but shortly afterwards started using it. He hated me seeing him use it in the beginning but he got used to that too.

[Ker13]

Just thought I'd mention that my mom is very anti-medication, and she uses a combo of glucosamine sulphate and salmon oil for HER arthritis, and they work extremely well for her. Can't see how salmon oil could hurt a kitty, if everyone else has tried glucosamine on their cats.


That little paragraph just took 5 minutes to type because little Turdlet1 22222222222222222222222 keeps trying to "help".



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