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:
“Everybody’s an artist. Everybody’s God. It’s just that they’re inhibited. I believe in people so much that if the whole of civilization is burned so we don’t have any memory of it, even then people will start to build their own art. It is a necessity—a function. We don’t need history.”
—Yoko Ono (b. 1933)
“The older one grows the more one likes indecency.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)