Last night we floated away

Around 2:30 this morning, I awoke to pouring, sluicing, pounding rain, and a wet, desperately purring cat who wasn't supposed to have been let in by my mother, via her bedroon window, but she forgot... She has had kind of a rocky couple of days. Yesterday she showed symptoms of weirdness very early in our walk, causing me to get her turned around sooner than usual. The same behavior came out today, but she wanted to do her 8 blocks, so despite my better judgement, we did. She looked at the steps to our house, and I noticed she was red-faced and sweaty. I had her sit down on the bottom step, and ran in to get our son to help me get her up into the house. Fortunately she didn't pass out, but she was panting, said she felt as if she'd just run a mile.
I have the feeling she is hitting another downward plateau in her physical capacities, and will need to take shorter walks. I'll need to help her do this, and come up with alternative activities for her.
She mentioned yesterday that she'd always enjoyed raking leaves, so we went out later this afternoon so she could sweep leaves off the sidewalk. It was lovely and sunny, the wind had died down, and she exclaimed that it was marvelous to do this. Considering the size of our maple tree, we'll have several more sessions of leaf removal in store!