Needing Ideas / Help with Purrcival
Don't worry, he's (mostly) fine. Well, the truly important stuff still works anyway.
He's now completely blind and deaf...and arthritic. In the last two weeks he's started getting lost in rooms and bumping into walls. He can make it to his food and to the litter box, but I have concerns about his quality of life and about what to do when he can't get to those places. Some of the suggestion about living with a blind and deaf cat are pretty basic - don't move furniture around, keep clutter to a minimum, close doors to rooms they don't need access to, feed them at the same time everyday, etc. But I'm wondering if anyone has more pinpointed ideas or experiences. Does having a texture around important things help them navigate? Should I start thinking about confining him to one room unless he's in another room with us? That seems cruel and a denial of freedom, but he may be miserable trying to navigate to the basics (his box and food are on opposite ends of the house). It seems the new difficulty of navigating is making his arthritis worse, since he's having to walk more both to hug the walls so he knows where he is, but also because he keeps getting lost along the way.
Let me know if you have any ideas!
He's now completely blind and deaf...and arthritic. In the last two weeks he's started getting lost in rooms and bumping into walls. He can make it to his food and to the litter box, but I have concerns about his quality of life and about what to do when he can't get to those places. Some of the suggestion about living with a blind and deaf cat are pretty basic - don't move furniture around, keep clutter to a minimum, close doors to rooms they don't need access to, feed them at the same time everyday, etc. But I'm wondering if anyone has more pinpointed ideas or experiences. Does having a texture around important things help them navigate? Should I start thinking about confining him to one room unless he's in another room with us? That seems cruel and a denial of freedom, but he may be miserable trying to navigate to the basics (his box and food are on opposite ends of the house). It seems the new difficulty of navigating is making his arthritis worse, since he's having to walk more both to hug the walls so he knows where he is, but also because he keeps getting lost along the way.
Let me know if you have any ideas!