Senior cat with dementia anyone?

[SheilaT]

9. Some years ago I had a senior cat with dementia.

She'd been used to going in and out of the house quite freely, and as she got more senile, she'd do things like sit in the middle of the road. A couple of times she was brought back home to us by kind strangers. It was very hard to keep her indoors, since she was so used to going out, but we finally were able to keep her inside. She could stare at a cube of melting ice with total fascination. It was clear she often didn't know what room she was in, or what she wanted to do there. Fortunately, she continued to use the litter box as needed.

What was really odd was that she suddenly stopped purring. None of the usual things that triggered purring worked. It was strange and almost off-putting, because purring is such a wonderful bonding thing between humans and cats. That lasted for about a year, then, she resumed purring for about a week, but that was perhaps two weeks before she left us permanently. By which I mean we took her to the vet to be euthanized.