# Cat  Years?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-years/227920>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 7, 2004, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-years/227920 "2004-02-07T00:08:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![autobulb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@autobulb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/autobulb)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2004, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-years/227920/1 "2004-02-07T00:08:45Z")

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You know ‘they’ say that 1 dog year is about the same as 7 human years? What is ratio for cats and humans? Also, how do they determine this?

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**Author:** ![Lsura](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Lsura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lsura)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2004, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-years/227920/2 "2004-02-07T00:39:06Z")

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I checked out “cats for dummies” (I was trying to figure out why my cats do something) from the library last week and it had this to say:

> [@](#):
>
> A general rule for determining whether a cat is middle aged or old is that one year in a cat’s life equals four in a human’s. In truth, the situation is not that easy… A better equation is to count the first year of a cat’s life as comparable to the time a human reaches the early stages of adulthood, about 15 or so. … A two year old cat is roughly equivalent to a person in the mid 20’s. From there, the “four equals one” rule works pretty well…

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**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-years/227920/3 "2004-02-07T01:53:43Z")

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The ratio of human years to dog years is not 7 to 1, as [Cecil explained,](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_010b.html) BTW.

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**Author:** ![autobulb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@autobulb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/autobulb)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2004, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-years/227920/4 "2004-02-07T22:34:12Z")

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Cool, thanks for pointing that out.