Cats are old

Their knuckles creak when they limp over from rubbish piles to garbage cans,
Their formerly pretty pink muzzles turn to a leaky brownish rust
spreading like a disease,
The silky fluff is long gone,
bobbles of dry and brittle hair fall in strings from their stripped buttocks,
Their big eyes get glassy,
creepy,
sometimes pierced by a woeful claw,
pus is oozing, swelling the corners,  and the orifices,
while the body gets scrawny, and the coastal bones more pregnant,
The gait is clumsy, the heads swing and toss and twitch about,
as guided on a string by a vicious pupeteer,
They sprawl on the ground, anywhere, for a lack of energy to find a cosy spot,
the sun bites their face, and roasts their skin,
the earth soils their scarce fur, sticking all over,
but no step further can be made,
Their tongues are drawn out as to lick a last evaporating hint of life,
Their fangs are filed down, if not neatly broken so the rot is settling in the cavity,
and it stinks hard,
Nothing solid can go through their disarticulate throats,
ending creatures,
They go whitened and die, for the luckiest, at the threshold of a cast iron hearth.
Miserable, too.