Person rescues a 19-year-old tuxedo cat with barely any teeth and dementia, who was dumped by his previous owners, and gives him a second chance at life: 'Adopting a senior cat was the best decision I’ve ever made'

Mariel Ruvinsky • Writer and Editor

Dec 13, 2025 9:00 AM EST

Did you know that senior cats are some of the least adopted cats in shelters? Not surprising, right? Maybe not, but it's quite sad to think about. We understand why so many people love adopting kittens as much as they do, we really do. But senior cats make such amazing pets as well, and we don't think that people understand that, not really. In shelters, any cat above the age of one, is often considered "old" for adopting, and the drop-off in adoption for cats above the age of seven - senior cats - is even worse than that.

Of course, it doesn't matter how many times we tell people that they should adopt senior cats, that senior cats have a different appreciation for the comforts of indoor life, that senior cats often get cuddlier with age… at the end of the day, the thing that people will respond to are not words, it's stories like this one. This person didn't simply adopt a senior cat, they adopted a very, very old cat - a 19-year-old cat. And although they don't know how much time they are going to have with this cutie, they sure are thankful for every second of it.

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"Adopting a senior cat was the best decision I’ve ever made"

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We wish - so, so much - that more people would hear what you are saying. We wish more people understand that even old cats like that - especially them - deserve a warm home to live out their retirement. Senior cats make amazing pets. This story is simply another piece of proof for something that we already knew.
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We know that people always talk about how it's more difficult to get an older cat to get used to being inside, but that's an older cat, not an old cat. Older cats, in the prime of their lives, that's true about. But old cats, cats who have lived out in the wild, or who have been jumping from home to home, they know how to appreciate the comfort of a warm home in their old age. They really do.
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