How My Cat Became My Personal Trainer

To complement a strict regimen of stretching, massage, exercise, and heat therapy, I picked up the joint-health supplement glucosamine and chondroitin yesterday. For my cat.

I know that people and their pets are supposed to end up looking alike, but limping alike? I found out last week that she shares my diagnosis—severe osteoarthritis of the hips.

Mine is so bad that I’ll need a hip replacement eventually. But somehow she’s been doing a much better job than I am with managing her symptoms.

When she’s not stretching, she’s pushing her little 17-year-old joints into my hand for a massage, climbing everything in sight for exercise, or pressing herself up against the radiator for heat therapy.

Her self-imposed regimen mirrors exactly what my doctors have told me to do. I just never got my routine down.

There’s something about cold weather and bulky layers of clothing that keeps me stiff, hunched, and lazy. I can’t remember the last time I really stretched. And though I still get exercise by dancing two or three times a week, that’s not enough: I need to strengthen. I haven’t received a lick of manual therapy (massage, acupuncture, traction, etc.) in months. I stopped using my heating pad altogether when I lost the cloth cover.

What’s worse, I forget to take my glucosamine and chondroitin—a supplement that may help relieve joint pain—about six days out of the week.

When I heard the vet’s arthritis diagnosis, I asked, “What can we do?” Her flat reply: “Not much.”

I don’t like that answer, for my cat or for me. I asked whether supplements could help, since my doctor recommended that I use them. Her review was less-than-stellar: “It could help. Well . . . it won’t hurt. Just get the kind made for cats.” I crossed my fingers and picked up Cosequin for Cats.

My feline friend is setting such a good example that I’ve been motivated to develop my own take-care-of-myself routine. I’ll call it the Wonder-Kitty Plan.

1. After hitting snooze in the mornings, I will put my heating pad on my hip. (My cat sleeps there, so this will help her too.)
2. I will begin my stretches in bed, just like she does.
3. When she starts hopping around and climbing bookshelves, I will roll right into the tedious strengthening exercises that physical therapists of surgeries past have urged me to stick with.
4. I will take my supplements with breakfast when she takes hers.
5. And once a week I will shell out for some form of manual therapy. Or maybe I can bribe my husband to massage the kitty and me together.

Cue up “Eye of the Tiger.” Wonder-Kitty training is under way.