Memory in Older Cats
Just as in humans, advancing age may affect memory in cats. Some cats may experience a weakening of both learning ability and memory that affects them adversely in ways similar to those occurring in poorly aging humans. A slowing of function is normal, and this includes memory. Aging may affect memory by changing the way their brain stores information and by making it harder to recall stored information. Cats lose brain cells as they age, just as humans do. The older the cat, the more these changes can affect its memory. There have been no studies done on the memories of aging cats and memory, but there is some speculation that, just like people, short term memory is more affected by aging. However, research says that adult cats have a memory span of 16 hours compared to only 5 hours in adult dogs especially when it benefits the cat directly
Read more about this topic: Cat Intelligence
Famous quotes containing the words memory in, memory, older and/or cats:
“I hid my love when young till I
Couldn’t bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my life to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where’er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.”
—John Clare (1793–1864)
“The memory ... experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one’s mere personal life, that one has merely lived.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“We are older by faith than by experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You all talk like somebody else made these laws and Pharaoh don’t know nothing about ‘em. He makes ‘em his own self and he’s glad when we come tell him they hurt. why, that’s a whole lot of pleasure to him, to be making up laws all the time and to have a crowd like us around handy to pass all his mean ones on. Why, that’s a whole everything under the sun! Next thing you know he’ll be saying cats can’t have kittens.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)