How long has my dog or cat got?

What this is doing

It reads a life table. A life table follows a real population year by year and records, at each birthday, how many years the animals that reached it went on to live. That gives a different answer at every age, and it is a better answer than the number on the breed page, because the number on the breed page is an average that includes every puppy that died young. A dog sitting in front of you at ten has already got past all of that.

So a Labrador's life expectancy at birth in this data is 11.8 years, but a Labrador that reaches ten is expected to live to about 12.9, and a crossbreed that reaches ten to about 13.8. The tool gives you that second kind of number, for your animal's actual age.

Where the numbers come from

Dogs: the Royal Veterinary College's VetCompass programme built life tables from 30,563 dogs that died under veterinary care in the UK between 2016 and 2020, for 18 breeds, for crossbreeds, and for dogs split by sex and neuter status. Life expectancy at birth across all of them was 11.23 years. Cats: the same group built tables from 7,936 cats that died in 2019, overall and by sex and breed status, with life expectancy at birth for twelve breeds. All cats: 11.74 years. Female cats outlived males by 1.33 years.

If your breed is not in the list, choose the closest group. Sex and neuter status move the number by a year or more, so they are a better fallback than guessing a breed.

Why some breeds look worse here than on their breed page

The French Bulldog is the clear case. Its life expectancy at birth in this data is 4.5 years, while the larger 2024 study of 584,734 dogs puts the breed's median age at death at 9.8. The authors of the life tables explain it themselves: registrations of the breed went from 2,771 in 2011 to 39,266 in 2020, so when the deaths were counted the population was overwhelmingly young, and a young population contributes a disproportionate number of young deaths. That drags the at-birth figure down. It does not change what the table says about a French Bulldog that is already five, which is the number this tool gives you. Where the two studies differ, the result shows both.

What it cannot tell you

UK animals, so American figures may differ a little. Population numbers, so they describe the middle of the range, not your animal. The confidence interval is shown because a breed with a few hundred dogs behind it carries a wider margin than one with thousands. And nothing here accounts for weight, which the cat study found mattered: cats that were too light or too heavy for their frame died younger. That part is in your hands. Is my pet overweight? is the place to start.