★ Create A Clan Fanclub V.3 ★

[Simonpet]

@hazil: I agree with you there. For me, it's just a guideline and a minimum age to be considered for such-and-such position. For example, in my world, a warrior isn't allowed to have kits or an apprentice until they've been a warrior for at least two months but it doesn't guarantee that they'll find a mate or be given an apprentice despite them being "qualified." Same for elders; if a cat refuses to retire despite meeting the minimum age requirement to do so, the clan will let them keep being a warrior until they're ready to step down. Of course, they still suffer the consequences of old age...like drowning/otherwise dying, as you pointed out.

[Katrione]

I think they should become elders around 100 something moons. 70 moons seems a bit young in my opinion.

@Enchanted

Just message your Mod that you want that to happen

[Chamrosh]

I'm just going to be a pedant here...
You cannot die of old age. Old age is not a disease. It is a state in which your telomeres have shortened to such an extent that you cannot form normal, healthy proteins and become gradually more frail as your previous proteins deteriorating or are deliberately broken down.
Telomeres are a lump of non-coding DNA at the end of a chromesome. Some gets wrongly copied and shortened every time a cell duplicates, and when the telomeres are all gone, it starts deleting parts of the coding DNA (that's essentially it, but it's a simplification).

What kills is the result of the genetic damage. Most cells slow replication right down, but there's still a lot of damage because there's trillions of cells and any of them can make a mistake. Cancer gets significantly more common, likely because the genes that regulate the quality of a cell during S2 phase of the cell cycle are damaged, and similar for many other symptoms or disorders.

Other similar things that annoy me;
Cancer is a symptom not a disease, cancer research companies are dumping millions of pounds a year into deliberately misinforming the public and wasting their own research money on a symptom of incorrect internal genetic regulation. It seems reasonable to think as well, if they actually bothered with accuracy that they could also help with other disorders related to genetic regulation, such as muscular dystrophy.
Cancer is ridiculously rare before you're about 60. I know of two people who had cancer before then- my geography teacher and one of my more distantly related relatives. Given how many people you probably know of that's already pretty low but it's something like 1% of cancers happen before that age. About 1/3 of people get cancer because it's so ridiculously common in old age. It doesn't actually kill all that often though. Cancer is slow, as is the actual disorder behind it. Most elderly people don't get treatment for it because, basically, they'll have died of something else first. That's not doctor's being cruel, it's just realism. If your 90 year old patient has cancer and diabetes, and life expectancy is 70, you can be reasonably sure the diabetes will have killed them first. They can live longer by not going through the trauma of chemotherapy and by getting help for the diabetes.
High blood pressure doesn't at all actually impact anything to the extent of being significant. It's just a thing used as a very good indicator of how likely you are to have a heart attack (as blood pressure remains high in the low bit (the bit doctors care about) if there's no rest for your cardiac muscle, then it gets exhausted, then you're more likely to have an attack). Blood pressure's basically like the cancer again, but it's an indicator, not even a symptom.

Leader's wouldn't die of old age at all because you can't, but, for instance, if a leader dies of cardiac arrest? they may well die 8 more times from it, as, as far as I'm aware, cats can't remove their LDH cholestorol in the wild. As an arrest, can, theoretically kill in 5 minutes (it takes 5 minutes without oxygen to start damaging the brain enough for it to be reasonable to assume they'll die), the leader could still end up dying entirely within an hour. It would be rubbish writing wise, but it could happen. I'm assuming our little fat lump gets moved back to where it was before the attack struck, which wouldn't stop the coronary artery getting blocked again...

Tl:dr
Things that will never kill you: old age
Things that will kill you: diabetes, various forms of cancer depending on what regulation genes go wrong or mutate, athlerosclerosis, Alzheimer's, dementia, organ failure, getting so frail and having so few platelets left that a simple knock to the head can kill you, cardiac arrest, shock (as in extensive bleeding, not the emotion, pretty sure you can die of that too, though), many infections that you can no longer fight off, starvation (if you can't hunt and you have, idk, bad enough arthritis to stop you walking to food or something), flu, falls, fevers.... Etc.

Elders dying of any of those things there ^ would be realistic (and what I was going to be doing... If a cat gets to whatever I eventually choose as my age limit, it's going to be one of those things in the next few posts, basically.)

Something less depressing next would probably be good...

[deimido]

@Chamrosh - that was a real interesting read! thanks for sharing all that, haha.

as for the age talk, i've just been using this chart for my cats. /shrugs/ hope my math isnt extremely off here aAAA

1-5 months - kit

6-12 months - apprentice (although some apprentices can be a bit older)

1 year - 5 years - warrior (so 12 through 70 moons)

5 years - 7 years - senior warrior (70 through 90 moons)

7+ years - elder (90 through whenever-they-die moons)

[lameloserlexi]

@arto

Wow my cats die young compared to your's. X3
I compare it to the fact that, yeah, a cat can live that long, but only, like, two of my cats will ever live to see their 100's.

[Midnightkitkat]

(I renamed my cat. I haven't been replied to yet so I hope its fine?)

90- ? moons
Is about the age I move them to the elders den, earlier if they have a disability that happens/ gets worse.
If they live that long.

[deimido]

@roses - ! - how old are your cats when you plan to have 'em kick the bucket? :3c and my clan isnt rally that big on fighting unless theyre pushed to the limit or their allies really need the help, so they live longer given they dont have battle-related deaths happen often lol

@Midnightkitkat - yeah that's fine! :0 nice name choice btw~

[Katrione]

@Art

I like that age range

@Midnight

Yes, around 90 moons you should start sending your cats to the elders den. I think I will have that be the minimum age, but by the time they are 100 they definitely have to be in the elders den. You can definitely send your cats to the elders den earlier if they have a disability, you don't have to though. My cat, Otterstream, got paralyzed as an apprentice but she's still a warrior currently.

[Chinch Bug]

RANDOM FUN FACT, but there are actually around 13 lunar months/moons in a year...because...I felt like it needed to be mentioned...idk why

[lameloserlexi]

@arto

Around 92, but I'm not gonna allow any of them to live past 120.
Yeaaaaaaah, my cats kick that bucket sooner X3