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The oldest cat in the Royal City?

Sabrina is a healthy 116 years old - that's 25 years in cat years

If your golden years are meant to be the most peaceful than Sabrina is definitely doing something right.

She spends her days sleeping, dining and generally enjoying a quiet life in her home in the West End – not bad for 116 years old.

In cat years that’s 25 years.

Frank Norman and Heather MacKenzie brought Sabrina to New Westminster three years ago. The couple found the then 22-year-old cat at the Seattle Humane Society. She had been adopted out of the shelter as a kitten in 1992 and returned 22 years later.

So Norman and MacKenzie went down to meet her. They didn’t adopt her right away, he said, instead they came back and thought about it.

They were worried she’d need a lot of medical attention, considering her age, but her file seemed to indicate otherwise, so they decided to go for it, Norman said.

For her age, Sabrina is in pretty good shape. She has a bit of arthritis and gingivitis but no major health problems like kidney disease, which is common in senior cats.

“She just sort of sits and sleeps and eats. Once in a while, she’ll go upstairs and downstairs and maybe even sniff out on the deck for a few minutes and then come back in, but she’s pretty sedentary,” Norman said. “She’s like an old lady; she’s just sitting there most of the time.”

The benefits of getting an older cat are plenty, Norman said, but there is one thing in particular that makes them extra special.

“One of the good things about adopting a senior cat is you know what you’re getting. You go out there and get a kitten, you don’t know what kind of character that kitten is going to have or develop. You don’t know if it’s going to be friendly or just one of those cats that doesn’t really want to be friendly,” he said.

And Norman knows all about kittens.

He and his wife have a second cat – Taiga – who can be “sweet as pie one minute and scratching your eyeballs out next.”

(And for those of you wondering, Sabrina and Taiga are not friends.)

Norman thinks Sabrina may be the oldest living cat in New Westminster and he has high hopes she will live at least a few more years – and if she does, he’s considering contacting the folks at Guinness World Records.

“If you get your cat up into the 26-year-old then you might stand a chance of the longest-living cat alive,” he said. “You’re not going to break the all-time record, because that I don’t believe actually.”

The longest-living cat ever, according to Guinness World Records, was a cat from Texas named Creme Puff who lived to be 38 years old.