Christchurch retiree Fleur Ford's "matriarch" moggy Sarah is 31.

She may be deaf, easily disoriented and up three times during the night, but Ford says Sarah is "pretty wonderful really".

"She's got all her faculties."

But Ford could not take full credit for raising Sarah since birth, because she and her husband acquired her when their neighbours moved, leaving the cat "more or less abandoned".

"I have had her for 11 years and the owner lived opposite me and that's how I know her history.

"She was born on the West Coast, and her name has always been Sarah."

More than three decades in, Sarah "feels the cold terribly", so she hardly goes outside. The Fords run the heat pump all day and night to keep her warm - which makes her expensive to keep.

"We don't go very far because I worry about her really," Ford said.

At the vets, owner Heather Mills has been treating the medium-haired moggy for more than a decade.

"We sent her a 21st birthday card 10 1/2 years ago." Her file had her birth date as March 1982.

Apart from a slight heart murmur and some kidney issues, "she's still pretty healthy" for her age.

"They're not that common to get that old, I have to say. It's pretty unusual."

The next oldest cat that Mills had seen In her 23 years as a vet was aged 21 or 22.

When she had to operate on Sarah in 2009 after Ford accidentally ran her over in a car, she did not expect the old moggy to survive the trauma of having her tail removed.

She was nervous even putting her under with anaesthetic.

"It was kind of like knocking out the Queen Mother and hoping [she] lives," she said.

Although there is no entry in the Guinness World Records for the oldest living cat, a previous recordholder was Texan feline Cream Puff, who died at 38 years and three days in 2005.

A Daily Mail report in 2011 claimed Lucy of Llanelli, South Wales, was the oldest recorded cat, at 39 years.

The average feline lifespan was about 15 years, it said.