An old cat boards differently from a young one. She cannot climb to prove a point, skip meals without consequence, or wait out confusion the way a two-year-old can, and a cattery's glossy general competence tells you nothing about how it treats a frail seventeen-year-old at three in the morning. Your questions before booking have one job: separating the catteries where geriatric care is a lived specialism from the ones where an old cat is simply a young cat with grey fur and lowered expectations.
Overnight Checks and Medicines, Asked Precisely
Ask who checks the cats overnight and what that check actually involves: a walk past the pens, or opening each pen, confirming each old cat has eaten, drunk, used the tray and settled comfortably? Ask how the night checker records what they find, and who reads that record in the morning. Old cats deteriorate quietly, and a check that consists of glancing through mesh will miss the cat who has not touched water since teatime.
Ask how staff give prescribed medicines, in those words, and listen for a system rather than a shrug: medicines logged per cat, given as labelled, refusals recorded and reported rather than quietly skipped, and a named person responsible on each shift. Ask what happens when a dose is refused twice, or when a cat's condition changes mid-stay: which vet they call, how quickly, and how soon they phone you. A geriatric cattery answers these questions the way a good nurse answers questions about a ward round, without needing to think about whether such a system exists.
Mobility Help and the Pen Itself
Ask to see where an old cat would actually sleep. Ground-level pens without climbing demands suit stiff joints; a pen reached by ramps and shelves designed for athletes does not. Check the tray entry height with your own eyes, because a high-sided tray that a young cat hops into becomes a locked door to an arthritic one, and accidents beside an unusable tray are a design failure, not a behaviour problem.
Ask what mobility help staff provide as a matter of routine: bedding built up so rising is easier, food and water placed where a stiff neck reaches comfortably, help offered at the pace the cat sets rather than the round demands. Ask whether a frailer cat can be housed in a quieter corridor away from young, noisy boarders, and whether her own bedding and food can come with her. The answers reveal whether the cattery adapts the environment to the cat or expects the cat to adapt.
When an Old Cat Stops Eating, and Getting Terms in Writing
Ask what they do if an old cat stops eating from stress, and press past the first reassurance. You are listening for a sequence with a clock on it: how soon staff act, what they try, and at what point you and your vet are called, because appetite loss in a geriatric cat carries more risk than the same sulk in a youngster. A cattery that monitors intake per meal and weighs cats who are not eating is describing a system; one that promises cats always come round is describing a hope.
Before you book, get the agreed answers on checks, medicines, mobility arrangements, call-outs and costs confirmed in writing, so the care promised on a friendly tour is the care owed during the stay. A cattery that welcomes those questions will also welcome a Pet Passport handover in KinsLe, where her history arrives organised before she does.