Nineteen year old cat ? What did it do ? Gum the mailman to pieces ?
When I was a kid we had an old tom cat...toothless, but could not retract his claws. He loved to play but you normally would withdraw a bloody hand. Every dog in the neighborhood avoided the ol tom cat. He could slice and dice without difficulty.
I don’t know how long it’s been attacking (maybe all of its 19 years), but sometimes cats do have what I guess is the equivalent of a psychotic break and become completely unhinged. And it’s amazing how much damage they can inflict.
One of my kids was a paramedic, and one time she was called by the police to the scene of a “cat attack.” This sounded so funny that the dispatcher was making “meow” noises over the radio. When she got there, she found an adult woman and a young girl covered in blood, with lacerations and bites that required many stitches and in the case of the adult (who had rescued the little girl), a blood infection and a hospital stay.
They had had the cat for a long time but it had started to act a little strange, and when the girl went to pet it that day, it leaped at her, attached itself to her shoulder and began clawing with its back feet. The mother pulled it off and held it while she got the girl out of the house - and the cat absolutely ripped her arms and midriff. So it’s not really as trivial as it sounds!
Lol. My 19 y.o. Kitty still has most of her teeth and it still hurts like heck when she bites....and scratches too.
Kitty is NOT a very nice kitty.