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, older and/or cats:
“The pure serene of memory in one man,—
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
“As I get older I seem to believe less and less and yet to believe what I do believe more and more.”
—David Jenkins (b. 1925)
“Here was a little of everything in a small compass to satisfy the wants and the ambition of the woods,... but there seemed to me, as usual, a preponderance of children’s toys,—dogs to bark, and cats to mew, and trumpets to blow, where natives there hardly are yet. As if a child born into the Maine woods, among the pine cones and cedar berries, could not do without such a sugar-man or skipping-jack as the young Rothschild has.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)