The ultimate mature moggie is active and healthy at 27-years-of-age

This is Flossie, a dark tortoiseshell and a rescue cat who's 27 years old. She was adopted by Vicky from the Tunbridge Wells branch of Cats Protection in the UK. There are a couple of points to make.

Flossie a tortie cat aged 27. Image: screenshot from Cats Protection video.

Flossie is remarkably fit and well for 27. This is about ten years longer than the typical domestic cat's lifespan. 

Flossie was crowned the World’s Oldest Cat by the Guinness World Records last year! She was adopted as a mature moggy by Vicki from @CP_TwellsBranch and is doing well at 27 years old! #MatureMoggiesDay @GWR pic.twitter.com/rTQbEVt6t4

— Cats Protection (@CatsProtection) June 9, 2023

Despite being the Guinness World Record oldest living cat in the world, she is actually NOT the oldest living cat in the world as that accolade goes to Rosie, another tortoiseshell cat living in the UK as well, who's 32 years of age. A truly exceptional age for a domestic cat.

Rosie should be in Guinness's book instead of Flossie but she isn't because her owner has not made an application. This may change as Rosie has attracted a lot of attention recently. I should think Guinness World Records will try and contact her owner to put the record straight.

The video may not have a lifespan (excuse the pun) that is longer than this website which means that it may disappear from this page one day and if so, I am sorry. Or it may end up being a link to Twitter. Fine but not great.

How many domestic cats are aged over 30?

Rosie, a tortoiseshell cat living in the UK, is 32 years of age.  Her birthday was on June 1st this year. She beats the current listing on Guiness World Records by 5 years as Flossie is 27 years old. Why isn't she in the record book? Maybe she will be soon.

I have a page on Rosie which you can see by clicking on this link.

Rosie is aged 32 and almost unique in the world as at June 2023. Image: SWNS.

I am going to try and answer the question in the title. No one but me tries to do this sort of thing. It is likely (that's about as sure as I can be) that there are no more than a handful of domestic cats on the planet that are over 30 years of age.

There may only be one: Rosie! 😃 And in some future years, there may be none. The age of 30 is almost unique in the domestic cat world.

It is not an age that the domestic cat is evolutionarily designed to live to.  The domestic cat's wild cat ancestor, the African wildcat has reportedly lived to 15 years of age in captivity. That's about as long a life as this wild cat can live and it is half the age of Rosie!

Good genes are the reason. Some cats and some people have 'good genes' as they say. It is pure chance as I see it. 

It is also pure chance that we get to know about Rosie. This is the weakness of the Guinness World Records listings. It is reliant upon cat owners taking the time and bother to report their cat's long life to the editors of that well known book.

A lot don't bother. And a lot of cat owners may be living with a very old cat without knowing it because the date of birth is unknown.

The date of birth of domestic cats is not always recorded. These are the reasons why we can't answer the question in the title with clarity but what we can say with some certainty is that there can't be more than a handful, if that, of domestic cats over 30 in the world.

World's fattest living cat 2023 - 'Patches'

He is a rescue cat. He was slightly overfed! He is living today as at 5th May 2023 and losing weight as the woman who adopted him from the shelter has him on a diet. Surprised? The all-time world record fattest cat weighed a little more at 46.8 pounds. His name was Himmy. He lived in Australia and he died in 1986. Patches maxed out at 40.3 pounds.

Image by MikeB from one supplied by the Express.

He weighed the same as a 5-year-old boy. He was rescued by Richmond Animal Care and Control in Richmond, Virginia, USA.

Kay Ford adopted him. He is one of the heaviest domestic cats ever recorded. Ms Peters of the shelter said: 

“He was surrendered by his owner who was unable to take care of him anymore. When I first saw him, I said some swear words, he was the biggest cat I had ever seen.”

Veterinarians declared that he was 'completely healthy'!!

He is a picky eater 😎. It seems that his previous owner managed to spoil him nonetheless.

Kay Ford is retired and the perfect caregiver provided she can diet him consistently but slowly to avoid fatty liver disease. Dieting too fast can cause this disease. He has lost a little bit of weight already but is still enormously obese.

He is not a Guinness World Record holder. I mean that he is not listed in their book. He is considerably heavier that the domestic cat that they thought was the world's heaviest. I expect they'll amend the book. Although Patches' weight is a fading record. He'll be normal one way and feel a lot better.

Man who owns the world's tallest domestic cat spends almost $500 per month on pet food

Physician, Dr. William Powers, is known for being the man who owns two world record domestic cats: the domestic cat with the world's longest tail and the domestic cat who is the tallest to the shoulder. The former is a silver tabby Maine Coon and the latter is an F2 Savannah cat whose name is Fenrir Antares Powers. The Maine Coon's name is Altair Cygnus Powers. He is also known for losing 2 world record-holding domestic cats in a devastating house fire.

Powers and his overweight world record holding F2 Savannah cat. Image: Photo: Guinness World Records 

When I read that he spent upwards of $500 per month on pet food it made me perk up a little bit and I ask myself why and how because it seems to me to be an enormous amount of money.

And the reason is this: firstly, he has six cats in all including the two mentioned. And perhaps more importantly, he prepares a special diet for his F2 Savannah cat who is always hungry. 

The last point is an important one because not that long ago, I wrote an article stating that in my opinion this F2 Savannah cat was overweight at that time. It appears that Dr. Powers has been giving in to his Savannah cat's demands for more food. 

And I wonder whether he is having trouble keeping his Savannah cat entertained and stimulated. Perhaps the cat is bored but I feel fairly certain that he was overweight and at 36 pounds that, too, would seem to be excessive even for such a large domestic cat.

Apparently, he's a very friendly and outgoing Savannah cat but he is very big, as expected, for a domestic cat. And no doubt he is active because Savannah cats are active or more so than typical domestic cats. They are also more intelligent and therefore need more stimulation which in turn results in more activity.

He makes a custom diet made out of raw meat, mainly chicken but sometimes other animal sources. And he adds supplements like essential amino acids, long chain fatty acids, porcine bonemeal and other additives such as nutritional yeast flavour.

So, seems that he provides a raw diet for a Savannah cat as the main diet. This doesn't surprise me at all. He probably feels that it is necessary as this cat has a lot of serval DNA in him and a well-prepared raw diet containing all the nutrients that a domestic cat requires plus excellent storage is probably going to be better than standard high quality wet cat food. 

But that is a matter of debate and most veterinarians recommend that cat owners do not prepare a raw diet for their cat.

Of course, this doctor is going to be more critical about food preparation and so on which is why he is probably well-qualified to do what he does.

We don't know what the other cats get but I suspect that it is more of a standard commercially prepared cat food diet.

Dark tortoiseshell, Flossie, is world's oldest living cat at nearly 27

Her name is Flossie. A good name. She is a very dark tortoiseshell domestic cat living in Orpington, near London (southwest) with Vicki Green and Guinness World Records have bestowed upon her the award of the world's oldest living cat as at today's date at 26 years and 330 days old. Here they are:

Vicki Green with her Guinness World Record holder of oldest domestic cat at nearly 27. Image: screenshot from Guinness video below.

Here is Flossie in closeup:

Flossie closeup. Image: screenshot from video.

Flossie is deaf and mostly blind. Ahh. I feel for her, but she is a beautiful companion for Ms Green. They get on well Vicki said. Flossie is only just a bit younger than Vicki. Flossie outlived her two previous owners!

RELATED: List of oldest living and deceased domestic cats but 2022 records are sketchy.

Flossie has beaten an American cat to the record. Corduroy was 26 years and 300 days old when she died on May 27, 2016.

Ms Green said:

"I knew from the start that Flossie was a special cat. But I didn't imagine I'd share my home with a Guinness World Records title holder. She's so affectionate and playful, especially sweet when you remember how old she is."

Here they are with the certificate:

The certificate, Vicki and Flossie. Screenshot.

And here is the YouTube video:

Some large dog breeds, by comparison, live to 7 years approximately. Flossie is 20 years older. She is amazing.

8,108 miles is the current record for longest non-stop bird flight

The flight was made by a female bar-tailed godwit. The same female bird had set a previous record at 7,500 continuous miles, 13 years ago. That record was beaten by another female bar-tailed godwit by about 125 miles in a non-stop flight from Alaska to New Zealand on September 26.

The bar-tailed godwit is said to have the aerodynamics of a jet fighter with long their pointed wings and sleek body shape. It flew the more than 8,000 miles from Alaska to Australia and in doing so set a world record for continuous avian flight.

Bar-tailed godwit. Credit: see photo.

In this last world record non-stop bird flight the bar-tailed godwit left south-west Alaska for its summer grounds in New Zealand on September 17. It hit strong winds over the Pacific, south of Fiji which forced a large detour west to Australia. The bird was carrying a very small solar-powered satellite tracking device. It landed at Tweed Heads, 500 miles south of Sydney at around 9:30 AM on September 27. The bird was tagged with the identifier: 4BBRW.

The flight of 8108 miles had taken 239 hours; in all 10 days in the air flying. It has since flown another 1,200 miles to New Zealand.

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And Australian bird photographer, Jeff White, noticed the satellite transmitter on the bird about five hours after it had landed in an estuary near the border of Queensland and New South Wales. It took a series of pictures and only later did he realise the importance of the bird to bird watchers when he saw the tag.