Between checkups, a senior cat changes in increments too small to remember accurately: a little left in the bowl, a favourite shelf quietly abandoned, a slower start after a nap. Memory smooths those increments into a vague feeling that she is slowing down, which gives her vet almost nothing to work with. A written record keeps the increments themselves. The discipline is not to measure everything, but to watch a small, fixed set of details every week and write down what you actually saw, in plain words, on a dated line. Observation is the owner's contribution; interpretation belongs to the vet who reads the pattern with her history in hand.
Appetite: Amount Eaten and Enthusiasm
The appetite part of the set has two halves that must be recorded together: amount eaten and enthusiasm. Amount alone misleads, because a cat can finish a bowl she greeted with indifference, and enthusiasm alone misleads on a day she was distracted. Note roughly what portion of her meals she ate, whether she arrived for food or had to be called, and whether she ate steadily or in small visits across the day. Record the days she leaves food she normally finishes, and also the days she asks for more, because both directions are information. Keep the food itself constant while you track, where you can, so that a change in eating is a change in her and not a change in the menu.
Movement: Jumps, Stiffness, Trays and Hesitation
The movement half of the set covers jumping to her usual spots versus lower ones, stiffness after rest, tray accuracy, and hesitation at stairs or the flap. Note which heights she still chooses and which she has quietly swapped for lower routes, whether she uses a chair as a halfway step she did not need before, and how she moves in the first minutes after sleeping, when stiffness is clear to see. Tray accuracy means whether she gets in cleanly and comfortably, or has begun missing, perching on the edge or choosing somewhere else. Hesitation is the pause before the stairs, the flap or a jump she once took without thinking, and it is worth its own mention on the weekly line whenever you see it appear or grow.
Weighing Monthly on the Same Scales
Weigh her monthly, on the same scales, at a similar time of day, and write the figure beside that month's weekly lines. Gradual weight change hides under a familiar coat and under daily handling, and owners are often surprised by a number a scale has been ready to give them for months. Monthly is the right cadence for weight, because weekly figures bounce with meals and water and create worry without information, while a monthly series shows a trend a vet can judge. The practical method for a cat who dislikes scales is to weigh yourself holding her, then weigh yourself alone, and record the difference in the same way every month so the series stays comparable.
Dated Weekly Lines Your Vet Can Use
Write the record as dated weekly lines, each one a few plain sentences covering that week's set, and resist the urge to score, rate or conclude. A line that says she left a third of her suppers, swapped the windowsill for the sofa arm and paused at the flap twice tells a vet more than a page of worry, because it holds dates, specifics and change over time. Bring the lines to every checkup and hand them over; patterns that span several months are exactly what a vet cannot reconstruct from an examination alone. The record draws no conclusions and names no conditions, and that restraint is what keeps it trustworthy. A vet can judge the pattern far sooner when those weekly lines live in Pet Passport through KinsLe, filed alongside her monthly weights.