When will she get it?

The little cat is getting old - she's still quite fit for her age, but you can see the tooth of time taking its toll. Not only on her own teeth, which are fewer now: she's had surgery recently, with the removal of three of her remaining (not so numerous) teeth. She also almost only white whiskers now, where they once used to be all black.

We don't know how old she really is; we got her from the shelter back in 2012, and she was grown then but of unknown age. She'd probably had kittens at least once before then, so that would mean at least 3 or so years of age, and the shelter vet estimated her to be about seven. Another vet, later on, said she's probably already much older, estimating her to be 10, more likely 12 years. Which means that she's now something between at least 11, or maybe even 21. We will never know, but hope she'll remain fit and happy for some more years to come.

More important than her actual age, though, she now has some days where she seems to have a hard time to jump up onto my desk or her cat bed in the office, which are about the same height. Sometimes she floats up there utterly gracefully, and sometimes... well. Not so graceful abortions of the jump. Since she loves to hang out on my desk or snooze on her office bed while I'm working, we installed a little cat ramp for her on the side of my desk:



This has been met with some suspicion. She's not very adventurous, the old lady, and was not sure about putting a single paw on the board, let alone explore it to stroll up it. So in the last week, there's been treats and gentle putting her onto the thing and nudging her to use it... and it seems she's now losing some of her mistrust and apprehension. We're still waiting for the penny to finish dropping - so bets will be taken on when she will use the ramp without promting!