Happy Birthday, Flossie! The World’s Oldest Living Cat Just Turned 30

December is full to the brim with parties and celebrations, but there’s one anniversary that it’s very important not to forget – the birthday of Flossie, the world’s oldest living cat.

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Born on December 29, 1995, Flossie was officially recognized as the world’s oldest living cat by Guinness World Records (GWR) back in November 2022, at which point she was just about to turn 27.

"We were flabbergasted when we saw that Flossie's vet records showed her to be 27 years old," Cats Protection's Branch Co-ordinator Naomi Rosling told GWR at the time.

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Flossie was still alive and well last year, and there’s been nothing since to indicate that the senior tortie isn’t still with us, so as of yesterday, she’s now 30 years old – the same age as her current owner. 

It’s an impressive age; the average lifespan for a domestic cat is 14 years, although this can depend on factors like their breed, diet, and environment, and it’s not unusual to hear of cats living for at least 20 years.

Flossie hasn’t been entirely immune to the aging process – she’s deaf and partially sighted – but there doesn’t seem to be any slowing her down.

When I adopted her, I thought she’d only have a few months left,” wrote Flossie’s owner Vicki Green in The Guardian last year. “To my surprise, I’ve had her for over a year now and she’s still going strong.”

“[S]he’s still very active – as active as you can be at her age. I bought her little stairs to get up on the sofa, but she hasn’t used them at all; she still jumps everywhere,” said Green. “I think she’s lived so long primarily due to luck, and because she was loved by her previous owners.”

Flossie isn’t the oldest cat ever to have lived, though. That title goes to the deliciously named Creme Puff, a mixed tabby cat who lived to a whopping 38 years and 3 days old. Owner Jake Perry attributed her long lifespan to a particularly luxurious lifestyle.

As well as the usual dry cat food, Perry told Atlas Obscura in 2015 that he gave Creme Puff and his other cat – Grandpa Rex Allen, who also happened to be the previous record holder for oldest-ever cat – "a home-cooked breakfast of eggs, turkey bacon, broccoli, coffee with cream, and – every two days – about an eyedropper full of red wine to 'circulate the arteries'."

The scientific legitimacy of that approach is… iffy, to say the least, but we can’t imagine the cats were complaining.