Sabine, our beloved grandma cat, turns 20 years old this spring. Since she was a rescue, we’re not sure of her exact birthday, but the folks at the shelter where we got her in summer 1995 thought she’d started her life sometime in late winter or early spring. She looked like this back then – here with her “brother,” Snowshoe, who died very young:
Now, she looks like this, pretty much all the time:
She still does make an effort to cozy up to us every day, and – judging by her loud purring – loves to sit on or next to our legs, soaking up our warmth and enjoying gentle strokes of her back and head.
Though her appetite still strong, and she can definitely meow with surprising volume, she can’t jump quite as easily as she used to, and as this video shows, she’s apparently quite deaf – or maybe just good at ignoring the vacuum.