Did my Wife LIE about how long cats will live?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cats can live to their early 20s. Many live until their mid to late teens. Most of the cats I've known belong to the second group.

It sounds like this is an important issue to you and that you're not happy with your wife's "claims" and "statements" and possible "LIES" about the cats. Why didn't you look up cats' life expectancy before you married your wife?

I don't think the OP is really all that serious about the "LIES", well I hope not anyway. But four cats is a lot of cats. A lot. Too many for me and I love cats. Two is my limit.

[Anonymous]

She was madly in love. Cut her some slack.

[Anonymous]

I think she was giving you averages. It's my understanding that male cats, on average, live to be around 12 or 13 and female cats tend to live a few years longer than that. I had two indoor cats: Male died around 12 (kidney disease) and the female died around 16 (oral cancer). I would consider that pretty "normal."

[Anonymous]

4 cats is excessive.

I have only one, and he will live to be about 18. He will also end up weighing 20 lbs.

I would have gotten rid of him, but my kids love him to death.

[Anonymous]

She didn't lie. That is true. But some live longer, some live shorter. We had two cats (from DH's previous relationship) and one kicked it at 9 years old (indoor but health issues), and the other is useless and dirty and she is going to live a long time, I know it.

I got a hamster in college since I knew from experience that they live for about a year. Wouldn't you know, it lived for 3 friggin' years!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She most likely told the truth and inadvertently lied, and the difference is what is known as actuary science. Take a look at an actuarial table. I don't have one for cats, but here is one for people:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Excerpt_from_CDC_2003_Table_1.pdf

You can see on this table, that the life expectancy at birth is 77 years.

Yet, if you look up a 67 year old person on this table, they are expected to live another 17.6 years, ie until 84.5

How can that be, especially since medicine has improved so much since that retiree was born? Shouldn't the baby live much longer than someone born in 1944?

The answer, which you can read on the table is this. The life expectancy for someone who has already made it to their 67th birthday is greater than that of an average newborn baby, because the baby faces 67 years in which anything could happen to shorten his life.

So if your wife tells you that cats usually live 12-14 years, that is true. But what you really care is how many more years an 8-15 year old cat can expect to live. You and I both know that 15 year old cat is not staring death in the face. He made it 15 years, and so he could live a lot longer.

OMG! Are you serious? I hope not! Does that mean that someone who is 92y old will not die anytime soon?

It means that they have a decent chance of living to the next year, and once they are 93 they have a decent chance of living to the next year. Eventually everyone dies but this is the difference between "What are my chances (at birth) of living to 93?" vs. "I'm 92, what are the odds I will see my next birthday?"

It's a conditional probability. If you like to think in football terms, a probability is "What are the odds that the Redskins will win the Superbowl?" (0.00005%) A conditional probabilitiy is "What are odds that the Redskins will win the Superbowl, given that they just won the NFC championship?" (50%, er, 20% but still much better).

[Anonymous]

If you want to see the probabilities for very old people, here is a table.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

A 92 year old only has a 20% chance of dying during that year. Their life expectancy at 92 is 96.

However, at 117 years, you have an 80% chance of dying in the last year. Very, very few people have lived longer than that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She most likely told the truth and inadvertently lied, and the difference is what is known as actuary science. Take a look at an actuarial table. I don't have one for cats, but here is one for people:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Excerpt_from_CDC_2003_Table_1.pdf

You can see on this table, that the life expectancy at birth is 77 years.

Yet, if you look up a 67 year old person on this table, they are expected to live another 17.6 years, ie until 84.5

How can that be, especially since medicine has improved so much since that retiree was born? Shouldn't the baby live much longer than someone born in 1944?

The answer, which you can read on the table is this. The life expectancy for someone who has already made it to their 67th birthday is greater than that of an average newborn baby, because the baby faces 67 years in which anything could happen to shorten his life.

So if your wife tells you that cats usually live 12-14 years, that is true. But what you really care is how many more years an 8-15 year old cat can expect to live. You and I both know that 15 year old cat is not staring death in the face. He made it 15 years, and so he could live a lot longer.

This is the greatest answer EVER on DCUM. Ever. Anyone who brings out actuary tables and then actually explains them when asked about the life expectancy of a cat is A-OK in my book.

[Anonymous]

So you lived with 4 cats with a cat allergy! Lucky you got over it. I would not have put up with 1 cat and yup they can live over 20+ years.

Get walked over much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She most likely told the truth and inadvertently lied, and the difference is what is known as actuary science. Take a look at an actuarial table. I don't have one for cats, but here is one for people:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Excerpt_from_CDC_2003_Table_1.pdf

You can see on this table, that the life expectancy at birth is 77 years.

Yet, if you look up a 67 year old person on this table, they are expected to live another 17.6 years, ie until 84.5

How can that be, especially since medicine has improved so much since that retiree was born? Shouldn't the baby live much longer than someone born in 1944?

The answer, which you can read on the table is this. The life expectancy for someone who has already made it to their 67th birthday is greater than that of an average newborn baby, because the baby faces 67 years in which anything could happen to shorten his life.

So if your wife tells you that cats usually live 12-14 years, that is true. But what you really care is how many more years an 8-15 year old cat can expect to live. You and I both know that 15 year old cat is not staring death in the face. He made it 15 years, and so he could live a lot longer.

This is the greatest answer EVER on DCUM. Ever. Anyone who brings out actuary tables and then actually explains them when asked about the life expectancy of a cat is A-OK in my book.

I try to make one well-considered, fact-based post for every eye-rolling nastygram I submit. Obviously I had to make up for something really bad yesterday.

[Anonymous]

"I don't think the OP is really all that serious about the "LIES", well I hope not anyway. But four cats is a lot of cats. A lot. Too many for me and I love cats. Two is my limit. "

I have 3. They have greatly improved the quality of my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:4 cats is excessive.

I have only one, and he will live to be about 18. He will also end up weighing 20 lbs.

I would have gotten rid of him, but my kids love him to death.

Bitch!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"I don't think the OP is really all that serious about the "LIES", well I hope not anyway. But four cats is a lot of cats. A lot. Too many for me and I love cats. Two is my limit. "

I have 3. They have greatly improved the quality of my life.

That's awesome. I really do love cats. Two is just my own personal limit after having more than two in the past and feeling overwhelmed.

[Anonymous]

I've had lots of cats. Indoor cats live 15-20 years. Outdoor ones have shorter lives sometimes, I think, because they drink out of puddles and get in fights and get diseases and stuff. Mine have all lived long, long lives.

[Anonymous]

Really not a fan of cats. Couldn't live with 1, let alone 4, and let alone having to take allergy shots. You're a good husband. Here's hoping yours stay in the promised life expectancy range. Some of these people with 18+ year old cats are really torturing them with treatments, etc rather than letting them go when the animal's health starts to decline.