Longevity and mortality in cats: A single institution necropsy study of 3108 cases (1989–2019)

Abstract

Client-owned cats who underwent a post-mortem examination (n = 3,108) at a veterinary medical teaching hospital between 1989 and 2019 were studied to determine longevity and factors affecting mortality. Demographic factors, environmental factors, age, and causes of death were assessed. Sexes included 5.66% intact females, 39.86% spayed females, 6.95% intact males and 47.49% neutered males. 84.2% were mixed breed cats. Age at death was known for 2,974 cases with a median of 9.07 years. Cancer was the most common pathophysiologic cause of death (35.81%) and was identified in 41.3% of cats. When categorized by organ system, mortality was most attributed to multiorgan/systemic (21.72%). Renal histologic abnormalities were noted in 62.84% of cats but was considered the primary cause of death in only 13.06% of cats. Intact female and male cats had significantly shorter lifespans than their spayed or neutered counterparts. FeLV positive status was associated with decreased longevity (P<0.0001) while FIV status was not. This study reports on risk factors associated with mortality and highlights areas of research that may contribute to improved lifespan in cats.

Characterization of the Domestic Cat Population of Uruguay: Breeds, Coat Colors, Hair Length, Lifestyle, Sex and Spay/Neuter Status According to Guardian Report

“…Differences between the sexes in individuals older than seven years could be linked to longevity. For example, O'Neill et al [31] in England, reported that female cats had a higher median lifespan than male cats (F: 15.0 years vs. M: 13.0 years); this is also the case of Kent et al [53] in the United States who found the same difference. Although the results reported by O'Neill et al [31] are in line with our study, other studies have found no effects of sex on the longevity of cats [54].…”

Castration Model Illuminates Sex Differences in Healthy Aging: Insights from Metabolome and Transcriptome Analyses

“…Historically, sexual dimorphism in aging has been largely overlooked, despite the fact that females consistently outlive males. While the practice of castration, known to prolong the lifespan in domesticated dogs and cats in veterinary medicine 69 , offers intriguing possibilities for aging research, its potential has only recently begun to be explored.…”

“…Historically, sexual dimorphism in aging has been largely overlooked, despite the fact that females consistently outlive males. While the practice of castration, known to prolong the lifespan in domesticated dogs and cats in veterinary medicine 69 , offers intriguing possibilities for aging research, its potential has only recently begun to be explored. However, existing studies on this subject are isolated and primarily focus on the decelerated methylation clock and lifespan extension following castration, offering scant insights into the underlying molecular regulations 11, 12, 70, 71 .…”

“…Historically, sexual dimorphism in aging has been largely overlooked, despite the fact that females consistently outlive males. While castration is a common practice in animal husbandry, known to extend the lifespan of domesticated dogs and cats in veterinary medicine, its implications for aging research have only recently been explored [66]. For instance, castrated domestic sheep exhibit both extended lifespan and decelerated epigenetic aging compared to their intact male counterparts [9].…”

Natural Language Processing for Forecasting Mortality and Premature Death in Companion Animals

“…The feature importance values were applied to the tabular sub-model to independently identify the features most important to each age group for cats and dogs. These revealed differences between different high-level ICD-11 codings' importance; for example, the presence of the Neoplasm coding across both species was a significant feature for predicting mortality with a rate of deaths associated with cancers, previously published as high, regardless of age, as one in four dogs 45 and one in three in cats 46 . Many conditions saw high feature importance when predicting mortality in the "young" and "senior" categories but moderately less importance in the "adult" population.…”