McKinney, Texas: Sydney turns twenty

This is Sydney, our cross-eyed little old lady cat. Her twentieth birthday is somewhere here in the middle of February. We don’t know an accurate date — her mother was a feral cat who lived on the docks of Newport Beach and we adopted Sydney as a kitten — but that was the vet’s best guess.

She’s the last of her litter. Friends adopted her two sisters and they are both long gone.

The poor old gal made it to twenty, but we know she doesn’t have much time left. Although she’s never had a sick day in her life, she’s now skin and bones. Her hearing is completely gone. She has cataracts in her right eye. She’s hunched over from arthritis. She no longer seems to understand what the litter box is for. She sleeps about twenty hours a day. She hasn’t left our spare bedroom in years. And she’s pretty much stopped eating, so we know her days are numbered.

I just looked up a chart that says twenty cat years is equal to about ninety six human years.

Happy birthday, Syd. It’s been a pleasure having you around for the last ninety six years.